Windows 7: store Thumbnails INSIDE folder - portable

I have several media folders with lots of large jpg, bmp and mp4 files stored on a USB Stick.

If I plug the stick in on another computer it takes a very long time until all the thumbnails for the files are generated.



I want to plug in the stick and see the thumbnails for all the media files immediately.



is there a way to store the cached thumbnail information right inside a folder to make it "portable"?

If there is no native solution, I would be grateful for other suggestions.

Hello Robin,

I'm afraid not with removable drives.

About all you can do is use a USB 3.0 flash drive and USB 3.0 connection to help load them faster.

The only idea I have is using a portable media viewer like say IrfanViewer (here the portable version from trusty PortableApps that you can place on the usb stick along with photos), and set it to store its own thumbnails (irfanview has this feature most others have as well). This way the thumbanils will be cached inside its folders on the usb drive.
Then when you want to see your pics/videos you simply fire up the portable irfanview or whatever other program you choose and use it to browse thumbnails and open images/videos instead of standard way.

I know, it's a bit of a hassle, but as Brink said you don't have a better choice with Windows 7

My knowledge in this department is a bit rusty... you pointed out NOT with removable drives. But the re-caching happens even on my local drive - most of the times.
If I remember correctly there's a thumbnails caching on/off toggle somewhere. I guess mine must be off. Do you know where it is?
I just was browsing through some old folders and stumbled over a "thumbs.db" right inside one of the folders... isn't that exactly what I was looking for?



That sounds like a good Idea. I was never a big fan of Irfanview... (still using Acdsee 2.5 - that's before it became too bloated) But I'll give IrfanView another try. The Portable option might be the solution...

Thank you.

Brink wrote a tutorial for that, here.

that's the current folder's archive of thumbnails, yes. I dont' know if another windows 7 can use it though as I disabled thumbnail caching because it kept screwing up and not displaying some thumbnails of my galleries.

You could disable the thumbnail cache, but keep in mind that it'll cause Windows to load all thumbnails from scratch each time any folder is opened.