Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Looking for Software with this feature
tomos:
If there aren't many duplicates in the hard drive, then manually selecting the ones to remove isn't a big deal. But when having to remove hundreds or even thousands of duplicates, this can take many hours of work. An example of having such large numbers of duplicates is when people use hard drive backup programs and the programs keeps copying the same files over and over into different folders and mixing them up until the hard drive is full and the user doesn't know what to do.
-ednja (July 06, 2015, 03:37 PM)
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yeah, in my experience, duplicate file finders still need a lot of work after the duplicates have been found. But maybe there's really good duplicate file finders out there (havent tried any in a few years).
[Could they/you just dump everything on an external drive and start from scratch?]
Relatives of mine want me to sort out their photos - they used big SD cards and didnt delete photos from their cameras, so they kept uploading the same photos again and again - often using different methods (so: different names as well as timestamps). That is a nightmare, gigabytes of duplicated material - and I have to admit, a nightmare I've been avoiding... so, if a solution is found here, I could give it a go as well ;-)
If you had a programme that would locate moved files - and do a bit comparison of files with the same size (but possibly different date &/or name) -
if you had that - you could just keep merging folders (or copying and deleting copied folders). At some stage you'd have to run a duplicate file finder on the remaining files. Syncovery could do the merging bit intelligently (finding moved files) - but not directly - you might have to sync both ways - and then delete one 'side'.
I might try that at the weekend with those photos I was talking about.
Syncovery uses MD5 checksums - but the option appears to do this on all the files - which would take a wet week to run.
The ideal, IMO, would be to compare file sizes, and only do bit comparisons of files that are the same size (regardless of the filename/date).
ednja:
IainB, you aren't the first one on this thread to not understand why file size is an issue for me. I will explain my reason. I have several thousands of guitar pro tab files that I've downloaded and some I've created myself. They are tiny files less than 100kb each. The total size of all the files is something like about 5 or 6 gb Many of them are duplicated in different folders. I've already spent a few weeks and many, many hours on organizing them and trying different programs. The reason why I move and replace if the file is same size is that in my opinion it highly unlikely that two files with same name and size have different content, although it's possible. I want to organize them accurately, but I don't have the time, so I'm willing to take chances on losing some of them in the events that two or more files of the same size and name have different content. If I created an ordinary text file at one point and gave the file a name, then a few years later created a text file and just happend to give it the exact same name, creating a duplicate but in a different folder. The two files would most likely have different sizes but not necessarily, but their content is obviously very different. In this case, I wouldn't want to just overwrite one of the files with the other because the odds of the two having different content is too high for my liking. With the guitar pro files, a file name includes the name of the band and the name of the song. In my opinion, with two guitar pro tab files with same size and same name will have the same content. It's possible that someone might have edited the file slightly so that it still has the same size. There might be an important difference in the content, but I'm willing to take the chance because of time. If I were to remove all of the duplicates, the total size of all the files might be reduced to about 1gb. One option I have with windows is I could just move all of the files and keep all files with same name by automatically renaming them. This might not be so bad an idea. The total size wouldn't get reduced to about 1gb and would remain the same size (5 or 6gb) and nothing would be lost. But still, it would be nice to have a program that would give some options that I want and the ability to automate it for a hands free operation. For me, if it took a week to do the operation automatically without me even being there, that's not a problem because finally I'd be free to work on some of the many other things I have to work on. I hope you'll be able to understand my need for comparing file size now. If not, then maybe it's me who's missing something?
MilesAhead:
I haven't tried FreeFileSync but it claims to let you create your own rules. Also it says it can sync depending on content, date or size. So, just reading the features(which is always dangerous) it would seem creating your own rule would just entail choosing name size and content being the same.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/compare-and-synchronize-files-and-folders-with-freefilesync
Edit: Note that I just downloaded and ran a scan with MBAM. It shows the installer has Open Candy. :down:
tomos:
I haven't tried FreeFileSync but it claims to let you create your own rules. Also it says it can sync depending on content, date or size. So, just reading the features(which is always dangerous) it would seem creating your own rule would just entail choosing name size and content being the same.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/compare-and-synchronize-files-and-folders-with-freefilesync
Edit: Note that I just downloaded and ran a scan with MBAM. It shows the installer has Open Candy. :down:-MilesAhead (July 08, 2015, 02:45 PM)
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it's okay as long as you carefully check options. See also IainB's review here on dc:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=29999.0
MilesAhead:
^^^ thanks. I just blew up my system yesterday so I don't want to restore an image again today. Paranoia mode. :)
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