Delete external thumbnail files that were not removed by ThumbsPlus, an image database software from Cerious Software Inc.
ThumbsPlus uses an Access database by default (with a renamed extension .tpdb8 instead of .mdb) and will save thumbnails within the database.
However, to avoid reaching the 2GB size limit for an Access database, you can make ThumbsPlus save the thumbnail files in a collection of sub-directories that reside in the same folder as the database.
Unfortunately, ThumbsPlus version 9 SP1 and below have a bug that prevent the thumbnail files from being deleted when they should.
This means that thumbnails will keep accumulating and the space they use will never be freed.
tpcleaner.exe is a command line utility that will delete thumbnails whose records were removed from the database.
Just save tpcleaner.exe in the same folder as your database file, open a command prompt:
C:\MyThumbPlusDbFolder\tpcleaner.exe "Thumbs.tpdb8"
The software will list the id and path of each deleted thumbnail if it finds any.
Thumbnails are stored in a coded directory structure that represents the unique ID of each thumbnail record in the database.
For instance:
Thumbs.tpdb8_files\000\02e\4fd.tn
A description of how the path is derived from the unique thumbnail record ID available on the forum.
tpcleaner just scans the Thumbnails table in the database and search for gaps in its ID and delete any thumbnail files whose unique ID fits in these gaps.
- For now,
tpcleaneronly works with ThumbsPlus MS Access databases (the default).
If there is demand for it, I will try to add SQLite support. - Should work on WinXP but not tested.
- Relies on Microsoft DAO 3.6 Object Library COM component, which should already be installed on your computer.
I'm just releasing this in the hope it will be useful to someone else. I make no guarantees that it will work for you, like, at all.
Don't be all mad at me if it corrups our computer, make a hole in your desk and burns down your house. It certainly shouldn't, but hey, this is software made by someone who shares 95% of his DNA with chimpanzees, so who knows.