Settings and where PDR keeps its data

Applies to: Photo Date Rescue for Windows, version 3.0.4. Last verified: 30 July 2026. Every statement on this page was checked against the shipping 3.0.4 build. If you are on an older or newer version, the behavior may differ — check What’s new for changes.

PDR keeps two quite different kinds of thing on your disk: your preferences, which are tiny, and its working data, which is not. This page tells you where both live, what is safe to delete when you are short of space, and what you lose if you delete it.

Throughout this page, %APPDATA% is the folder Windows opens when you type %APPDATA% into File Explorer’s address bar. Everything PDR keeps for itself is under one folder there.

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At a glance

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The Settings window

Settings opens from the App section at the bottom of the sidebar. It is a single window with a list of categories down the left, a search box at the top of that list, and the controls for the selected category on the right.

There is no Save button, and no OK button. Every change takes effect the moment you make it and is written to disk immediately. You close the window with the X. The version number of your copy of PDR is shown along the bottom of the same window.

Limitations

• There is no undo. Because changes save as you make them, the only way back is to change the control again yourself, or to reset everything.
• The search matches labels and related words, not the descriptions. Typing a word that appears only in a control’s explanatory text may not find it.
• Settings are per-computer. They are not carried to another PC, and they are not part of the library backup.

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What PDR remembers

The categories in the Settings window are:

• General — sounds, the welcome screen, duplicate handling and whether corrected dates are written into photo files.
• Library — whether reports and the search index can be removed, and whether the CSV and TXT export buttons are shown.
• Workspace — the folder structure for fixed photos, whether sources are remembered between sessions, whether they are cleared after a Fix, and the output format.
• After Fix — whether fixed photos are made searchable automatically, and the master switch for the AI features.
• S&D — Search & Discovery and how the library refreshes itself.
• People — face detection, visual suggestions when naming, and whether People Manager opens at startup.
• AI — face detection, subject tagging, automatic processing and the confidence thresholds those use.
• Capture — the screenshot and screen-recording hotkeys, format, quality, audio and webcam options.
• Viewer & Collage — tooltips and hints, and whether an enhanced photo is saved as a new file or replaces the original.
• Privacy & Security — hiding captions and transcripts, for when you are sharing your screen.
• Backup — the library database backup and the sidecar copy kept on your library drive.

Two things are worth knowing about the defaults. The AI features are off until you turn them on. And duplicate skipping is switched back on every time PDR starts, deliberately, so a session where you turned it off does not quietly become permanent.

Limitations

• Not everything you can change is in this window. Your library drive, your sources and your per-camera adjustments are set where you use them, not in Settings.
• Some controls only appear when they apply. A category can look shorter than this list suggests depending on what you have enabled.
• Duplicate skipping does not stay off. If you deliberately want it off for a run, turn it off during that session; it will be on again next launch.

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Reset to Optimized Defaults

At the bottom right of the Settings window there is a Reset to Optimized Defaults link. It puts every control in that window back to the value PDR shipped with.

It is deliberately narrower than it sounds. It changes preferences only. It does not touch your library drive, your saved destinations, the answers you gave the Library Planner, your per-camera adjustments, or the advisories you have dismissed. Nothing in your library is deleted, no photo is affected, and your license is not affected.

Limitations

• It applies to the whole window, not one category. There is no way to reset just the Capture settings or just the AI settings.
• There is no undo. Once reset, your previous preferences are gone.
• It does not undo the effects of a setting. Resetting the output format does not convert photos you already fixed.
• Onboarding is reset separately. A different control clears the library drive and planner answers and restarts the setup flow. That one does change your library drive choice.

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Where PDR keeps its data

Everything PDR keeps for itself is under one folder:

%APPDATA%\Photo Date Rescue\

Inside it you will find:

• pdr-settings.json — your preferences. Tiny.
• search-index\pdr-search.db — the library database. This is the one that matters: every date, caption, face, person, place and album you have built lives here.
• search-index\backups\ — the automatic snapshots of that database. Deleting these removes your ability to roll back.
• ai-models\ — the optional models you chose to install. Usually the largest folder here. See the models section.
• thumb-cache\ — thumbnails. Regenerated automatically.
• face-crops\ — the small cropped face images People Manager displays. Regenerated automatically.
• video-cache\ — playable versions of videos Windows cannot play directly. Regenerated on demand.
• whisper-cache\ — cached results of video transcription.
• fix-reports\ — the report from each Fix run.
• collage-projects\ and collage-captures\ — your saved collage projects and the images they use.
• Captures-temp\ — screenshots and recordings not yet filed anywhere.
• logs\ — PDR’s own log files, which support may ask for.
• license.json and a small hidden machine-identity file — your license.
• library-state.json — which library drive PDR is currently using.

Two more places sit outside that folder. Your fixed photos go to the destination folder you chose, not here. And the working folders PDR unpacks archives into are covered below.

Limitations

• The caches are safe to delete, the database is not. With PDR closed, deleting thumb-cache, face-crops, video-cache or whisper-cache costs you nothing but the time to rebuild them. Deleting search-index throws away every correction, name and caption you have made.
• PDR does not offer to do any of this for you. There is no “clear caches” button and no display of how much space each folder is using.
• These folders can be big. On a library of tens of thousands of photos, the thumbnails and face crops alone run to gigabytes.
• Uninstalling PDR does not necessarily remove them. Check this folder yourself if you are removing PDR to reclaim space.
• Do not delete anything while PDR is running. The database in particular is open and in use.

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Temporary folders from unpacked archives

When you add a ZIP or RAR archive as a source, PDR unpacks it into a working folder called PDR_Temp. That folder sits inside your destination folder if you have chosen one, and in the Windows temp folder if you have not.

The unpacked copy survives you quitting PDR. That is on purpose: a large Google Takeout export can take an hour to unpack, and PDR does not want to make you do it again next time you open the app. It does mean that if you unpacked a 200 GB export yesterday, roughly 200 GB is still sitting on your disk today.

PDR clears an unpacked folder in two situations. When you remove that archive from your list of sources, its folder goes with it. And at launch PDR looks through PDR_Temp for folders that no longer belong to any source you still have and removes those. Unpacking is also capped: PDR stops unpacking rather than filling your disk beyond about 55 GB in one go.

Limitations

• There is no button to clear it. 3.0.4 has no “clean up unpacked files” control in Settings. If you want the space back now, remove the archive from your sources, or delete the PDR_Temp folder yourself with PDR closed.
• The launch-time cleanup is conservative on purpose. It only removes folders it is confident are orphaned. A folder belonging to a source you still have listed is kept, however long ago you finished with it.
• Locked files are left behind. If Windows Search, your antivirus or an open Explorer preview has hold of a file inside the folder, the cleanup skips it and the remains stay on disk. Restarting Windows and deleting the folder by hand clears it.
• The 55 GB cap is a stop, not a queue. Reaching it stops the unpacking rather than working through your archive in stages.
• Canceling an unpack leaves a partial folder. Cancel stops the work; what was already written is removed by the cleanup above rather than instantly.

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The optional models and the space they take

PDR’s photo enhancement tools need model files that are too large to ship inside the installer, so they are downloaded only if you ask for them. You install and remove each one individually, and PDR shows the progress and the state of each.

They are installed to %APPDATA%\Photo Date Rescue\ai-models\. The three are:

• Face restoration — about 337 MB.
• Photo upscaling — about 34 MB.
• Background removal — about 179 MB.

Downloading a model is the only time PDR fetches one of these. Once it is on your disk it runs on your computer, and the photos you use it on are not sent anywhere. Uninstalling a model deletes the file and frees the space; you can install it again later.

These are separate from the models used for face recognition and subject tagging, which are covered on the People page.

Limitations

• A download that is interrupted starts again from the beginning. There is no resume. On a slow connection the 337 MB model is a long, uninterrupted download.
• Reinstalling removes the copy you have before it fetches the new one. If you reinstall a model and the download then fails, you are left with neither. Uninstall and reinstall only when you are on a connection you trust.
• The download is checked for size, not for contents. PDR rejects a file that arrives obviously truncated, but it does not verify the file against a published checksum or signature.
• Removing a model does not remove the results. Photos you already enhanced stay as they are.
• There is no total. PDR does not show you the combined size of what you have installed.

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Known gaps in 3.0.4

If you came to this page to reclaim disk space, these are the four things to know:

1. There is no disk-space screen. PDR does not tell you how much space its caches, its database, its unpacked archives or its models are using, and there is no control for clearing any of them.
2. Unpacked archives are not cleared when you quit. They persist by design, and the only automatic cleanups are the conservative one at launch and the one that runs when you remove the source.
3. Model downloads cannot be resumed, and are not verified against a checksum.
4. Settings are not backed up. The library backup covers your library database, not your preferences. Moving to a new PC means setting your preferences up again.

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How to check this page is still true

Every claim here describes behavior you can observe in the shipping build. If something on this page does not match what PDR does on your machine, that is a defect in one of the two, and we want to know: contact support. Tell us the anchor — for example /help/settings-data#summary — and we will either correct the software or correct the page.