I’ve written about Fotobounce before, here are a couple of links to my older posts: here (Fotobounce explained) and here (Download a whole Facebook album)
Fotobounce is fairly simple to use and does the job quite well. If you’re into downloading photo albums on Facebook, Fotobounce is pretty much the only way to do it but it does have one limitation that I’ve just discovered. Here’s the problem. When, and if, I get things sorted out, I’ll post an update on this.
The Goal: One of my friends has one album, Wall Photos, that has thousands of images in it. Many of these images are spectacular and I would like to archive them for my own inspiration and enjoyment.
The Problem: Fotobounce cannot download this album. It tries, sometimes for hours, but it can’t seem to get past the spinning wheel that indicates Fotobounce is working on something. Once, just once, Fotobounce got halfway through downloading the album, then got hung up before the job was done. I tried as recently as this morning for one full hour with nothing else running on the computer and Fotobounce failed again.
My Solution: Although I am not a programmer, I have noticed that Fotobounce does not work like other downloaders. I’m not sure why but Fotobounce seems to cache the photos it is downloading in a temp folder somewhere. Yesterday, I deleted my old Fotobounce installation and installed a fresh version. During the installation process, I changed the ‘save to’ directory to one that I made on my desktop. I wanted to keep track of what Fotobounce was doing and this desktop folder is a lot easier to find than the default directory in My Documents.
After Fotobounce was installed, I tried to download the problem album yet again. To test my theory, I also downloaded a smaller, but still sizeable, album at the same time. As Fotobounce was working, nothing was showing in the desktop folder. As soon as Fotobounce declared that one of the jobs was finished, that album popped up in the desktop folder. Even though Fotobounce worked for hours on the massively larger album, nothing ever showed up in the folder. Where are the images that we partially downloaded? I can only assume that they are in a temp folder somewhere.
The computer that I use Fotobounce on is pretty much the latest and greatest you can get. I built it myself and it’s not a slug, believe me. Lots of storage, 3 terabytes, lots of RAM, 8 gigabytes, and a pretty fast quad processor (i5-2500K @3.3 Ghz) plus Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS. I doubt that my rig is the problem here. Even if Fotobounce caches the images in RAM, there should be enough room. I am pretty sure the album, although it’s large, isn’t 4 or 5 gigabytes in size.
If you are downloading a torrent, your torrent client writes directly to your hard drive, it doesn’t cache your download. It may use a temp folder but the folder is right there in the directory where you have chosen to put the torrents. Sometimes, if you are downloading photos, you can actually look at some of the photos or play the avi file long before the download has completed. No such luck with Fotobounce. Nothing shows until it’s finished the job and, when the album is too large, it seems that nothing is written at all!
As a writer/experimenter/tech guy, I look at problems such as this from a different point of view than most users, I think. It’s a challenge. Once I find the solution, I write about it. If I don’t find a solution, I write about that, too. This particular setback may not have a solution. It’s frustrating but sometimes these things can be that way. We’ll see what happens. If I discover an answer, you’ll be the first to hear.
Thanks for reading!
hello.
just wondering if you know why fotobounce won’t show one of my recently added facebook friends (which is after fotobounce install). i uninstalled fotobounce, reinstaledit, even manually deleted it’s data folder in My Pictures to make it refresh the databases, but that friend still won’t showup, even though it’s all fine on facebook.
thanks 🙂
If you read this post: http://brianmahoney.ca/2012/11/protect-facebook-photos-from-bulk-downloaders/ you’ll see how the albums are hidden. Better yet, read this post: http://brianmahoney.ca/2012/10/save-facebook-albums-a-new-way-to-do-it/ and you will be able to download the albums another way. Let us know if you have a problem. It should work just fine. Thanks for commenting!
Hi 🙂
Maybe you can help me. I downloaded Fotobounce because I am thinking about closing my FB account, but before that I would like to get all the pictures where I am tagged on, but Fotobounce doesn t show me all of them, more then half of them, predominantly the older onces are missing.
What can I do in this case?
Thank you,
Katrín
We’ve sent an answer off to Katrin on this comment and we’ll do a post on this specifically but, in short, navigate to your own albums in Fotobounce then click on the ‘Photos of me’ tab up at the top. Then you can download all of the photos you are tagged in. Unfortunately you have to highlight the photos and right click then choose download. You can’t download the album in one shot as you can with other albums. We hope this helps.
Thanks for commenting!
Hi Brian,
Thanks for responding. I guess I have to deal with it.
The photos that I lost on Facebook were (1) some travel pictures I putted on Facebook before my camera got stolen and (2) pictures I got tagged at from friends. These photos were just on Facebook and too much to save to my computer one by one, that’s why I thought Fotobounce was a good option before I decided to delete my profile.
Thanks for your time and thoughts!
Marleen
Hi Marleen,
I thought there was something bad that happened and having a camera stolen is bad. I use Fotobounce for large albums but for small ones I like the Options button then Download. It’s quicker than the old right click and ‘save image as’ choice. Thanks for commenting. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you.
Brian
Hi Brian,
I posted a reply here a few days ago, but still not see it here. Did you get my message or shall I write it again? Seems like everything disappears online in my case: pictures, replies… haha ;).
Marleen
Hi Marlene,
Sorry for the delay, there were some things that got in the way. You seem to know just as much about this as I do, quite frankly. Maybe more! You seem to have resolved your problem, unfortunately it wasn’t the solution you wanted.
Any of the web archives, such as archive.org (http://archive.org/web/web.php), can’t archive Facebook.
There was a chance, back in January, that your photos might have been in your browser cache but I’m sure they aren’t there now.
Lastly, I really can’t figure out what photos you would have had on Facebook that aren’t on your computer. I know that isn’t my concern but it is curious.
Sorry I couldn’t help more. Take care.
Brian
Computers Made Simple
Hi Brian!
There is a difference between “de-activating” and “deletion” of a Facebook profile. Look for example at this article: http://personalweb.about.com/od/facebookprivacysettings/qt/facebook_delete_or_deactivate.htm.
And this part about the deleting for good: http://personalweb.about.com/od/makefriendsonfacebook/qt/delete_facebook_account.htm
When it’s still possible to log in with your password and e-mail, you have only de-activated your profile. I’ve chosen the delete option and am afraid my pictures are gone, now I don’t have them in Fotobounce anymore.
I just found this website which gave a little hope: http://www.ehow.com/how_8617952_deleted-facebook-profiles.html. But it doens’t worked out as well.
Do you have experience with getting things back from the web?
Cheers,
Marleen
Hello!
Maybe you can help me? I completely deleted my Facebook profile a while ago. Before I did I saved all my pictures from Fb by making a copy to Fotobounce. However, yesterday I found out they are all gone! No album left in Fotobounce… I guess it’s because Fotobounce only connects with the pictures on Fb, but doesn’t store anything. Is there anything I can do to get my pictures back?
Cheers,
Marleen
Hi Marlene,
Thanks for commenting. There are two things you could try:
1. Depending on how long ago you deleted your Facebook profile, you could always try to reinstate it and then save your complete history. Facebook has it and you can download it. Try that first.
2. Fotobounce keeps its photos in My Documents/My Pictures/name of album. If you did the ‘right click’ then ‘download’ thing with Fotobounce, then the photos should be on your computer. I have uninstalled Fotobounce and the albums are left, even when Fotobounce is uninstalled. Of course I have reinstalled it. As a last resort, you could do a search for *.jpg using the asterisk to mean every jpg file on your computer. Once you’ve done that, see if any match your missing Facebook photos. If you just saw the photos in the Fotobounce window and didn’t actually download the folders, then the photos won’t be saved on your computer. You have to actually tell Fotobounce to download the whole album or selected photos, otherwise they are only cached and will be lost when the connection to Facebook is lost.
Here is the link that explains how to download your Facebook data after you have signed up using your old email address: http://brianmahoney.ca/2011/12/facebook-data-download/
If you need more help, don’t hesitate to comment again.
Brian from Computers Made Simple
Hi Brian,
Thanks a lot for your suggestions! I’ve been trying the things you wrote, but am afraid it’s bad news for myself.
1. I deleted my Facebook profile in January this year. After a 14 days period of not logging in, it seems to be destroyed. I have been googling for the possibility of reinstating my profile, but couldn’t find anything. Do you know if in my case the pictures that were on my profile still ”exist” somewhere and can be get back?
2. I couldn’t find any picture in My Documents/My Pictures/name of album, so I tried the *.jpg search. Unfortunately I didn’t found a match with my missing Facebook photos. So, I’m afraid the last thing is the case: I only transfered the pictures from Facebook to Fotobounce, but didn’t download them from there. I thought transfering them to Fotobounce was enough to safe them, but it turned out it is not :(.
If you know anything that’s left to do, I look forward to hear from you.
Thanks again for your help,
Marleen
Hi Marleen,
I don’t think there is a time limit for the Facebook account reinstatement. I have an old account that I haven’t logged into in months, much longer than you, and it still works, everything is there, nothing is lost. I’m not sure why you can’t access your account. Even if you have disabled it, you can re-enable it by signing in again. Facebook will send you an email which welcomes you back. If you can’t log in, use the “Forgot Password” button.
Good luck!
Brian