📸 Scrape-together-old-photos - Digital Time Capsule

🕰️ Welcome to the Time Capsule Community!

We are on a mission to rediscover and preserve old memories by searching forgotten hard drives, USB devices, and folders for lost photos.

This repository provides a Bash script that automatically scans your external storage devices, extracts images, and organizes them by year and month based on metadata.

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🛠️ Features

✅ Scans external drives & USB devices for old photos ✅ Detects images (.jpg, .png, .gif, .tiff, .bmp) ✅ Sorts images by year & month based on file metadata ✅ Creates a log file for tracking scanned files

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🚀 Script: scrape_photos.sh

📂 How It Works:

• The script searches all mounted drives for image files.
• It copies them into a central backup folder sorted by year and month.
• A log file keeps track of all extracted images.

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📜 Bash Script (scrape_photos.sh)

Save the following script as scrape_photos.sh, make it executable, and run it.

#!/bin/bash

# Scrape-together-old-photos - Find and recover old photos from external storage
# Author: TimInTech | Version: 1.0
# Description: This script scans connected hard drives & USB devices for old photos and copies them to a central "Recovered" folder.

### 🔍 STEP 1: Define Directories ###
BACKUP_DIR="$HOME/Recovered"
LOG_FILE="$BACKUP_DIR/scrape_log.txt"

# Create backup folder if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"

### 📂 STEP 2: Find All External Drives ###
echo "[INFO] Searching for connected hard drives & USB devices..." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
MOUNT_POINTS=$(lsblk -o MOUNTPOINT,TYPE | grep part | awk '{print $1}')

if [ -z "$MOUNT_POINTS" ]; then
    echo "[WARNING] No external drives found!" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
    exit 1
fi

### 🖼️ STEP 3: Search for Photos & Copy Them ###
echo "[INFO] Scanning the following drives: $MOUNT_POINTS" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"

for DRIVE in $MOUNT_POINTS; do
    echo "[INFO] Scanning $DRIVE for image files..." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"

    find "$DRIVE" -type f \( -iname "*.jpg" -o -iname "*.png" -o -iname "*.gif" -o -iname "*.tiff" -o -iname "*.bmp" \) | while read -r FILE; do
        # Extract metadata (year and month)
        YEAR=$(stat -c %y "$FILE" | cut -d'-' -f1)
        MONTH=$(stat -c %y "$FILE" | cut -d'-' -f2)

        # Create target folder
        TARGET_DIR="$BACKUP_DIR/$YEAR/$MONTH"
        mkdir -p "$TARGET_DIR"

        # Copy file
        cp -n "$FILE" "$TARGET_DIR"
        echo "[OK] Saved: $FILE → $TARGET_DIR" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
    done
done

echo "[DONE] All images have been saved to: $BACKUP_DIR" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"

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📖 Installation & Usage

🔹 1. Download the Script

git clone https://github.com/TimInTech/Scrape-together-old-photos.git
cd Scrape-together-old-photos
chmod +x scrape_photos.sh

🔹 2. Run the Script

./scrape_photos.sh

🔹 3. View the Results

• 📂 Images are stored in: ~/Recovered/Year/Month/
• 📄 Log file: scrape_log.txt

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🔧 Additional Commands

📌 View Logs

Check the scan log to see which files were processed:

cat ~/Recovered/scrape_log.txt

📌 Delete Duplicate Files

If you want to remove duplicate images, use fdupes:

sudo apt install fdupes
fdupes -rd ~/Recovered

📌 Manually List External Drives

lsblk | grep -i usb

📌 Delete the Backup Folder (If Needed)

rm -rf ~/Recovered

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🤝 Contribute

🔹 Found an issue? Report it! 🔹 Want to improve the script? Submit a Pull Request!