dupllicate files. help!
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Posted on Sep 25, 2008 12:20 am
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
i just downloaded heatsoft's clone cleaner. my drives are in disarray and i really want to fix that this year. in preparation for using this program, i started to move some folder i'm pretty sure have lots of dupes into one central location on a big drive i have.
but that won't work. i just tried it and i was hit with a common error. midway through the transfer i get an 'access denied' message on one puny file. the copy/paste or cut/paste then stops and i'm left with the original folder still in place and then a half-copied new version on the new drive.
i've just increased my number of dupes. i have no way to really check to see what transferred over and what didn't. i don't know what happens when a copy/paste is interrupted like that. where the cutoff line is or if it's safe to delete the half-transferred folder.
so that's one problem.
the bigger problem is just this: can you really trust these programs? has anyone here used one, and if so what was your experience like? is there anything i should do in terms of pre-organizing? because i'm thinking now that it's not worth it, given what just happened. i'm tempted to run the program on my entire system while telling it to exclude system files. but somehow i don't feel secure doing that. in the end i'd have to hit a nuke key blindly and just hope for the best. that's a hard thing to do.
i can think of now way to handle this monster job. i have no method. yet something absolutely needs to be done.
one thing i'd do, if i knew how to do it, would be to simply put all photos in one new folder, all mp3s in another new folder, all movies in another, etc. if i could do that with a piece of software, that might make sorting things manually possible. at the very least i could run the dupekiller software on, say, just the photos folder. then i could easily scan down the results and open every picture whose filename i don't recognize. pairs would be right next to each other. i could verify that they're really copies and then delete one. and in the end every picture ....
that sounds like a headache too, come to think of it. i just have no idea what to do here. any ideas?
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NightcapVeni, MIDI, ViciMember
Since: Jul 02, 2008
Sep 25, 2008 01:55 am Did you copy/paste the folder or move it? When you copied it you can just delete the new folder because the original still exists. If you did a move, you can move it back to the original location and than the situation will be like before you did the move.
In the past I have used programs like Clone Cleaner and they can do a good job but... you have to be VERY careful with what you delete.
Sometimes it was such a tedious job to use a program like that and then repair (from backup files) the damage the days after, that I decided to get organized and KEEP my files organized. It's not always easy to keep that up, but I force myself to do it. Never needed a cleaner since.
Getting organized needs some preparation. What can help, is write down what different file types you have, e.g. MP3, photos, movies, documents etc. Then, when necessary (and often it will be!), write down all the different subdivisions you'll need for e.g. your music files or documents.
Let's use an example. When you have 2500 MP3s it would be easy to do a search for MP3 files on your drive(s) and move the search result to the Music folder. (My Music in XP). Problem with that is that you may have other music files e.g. WMV or WAV types and you don't necessarily want those mixed in with the MP3s. So you want at least a subfolder per file type. That would be a subfolder MP3, a subfolder WMV and a subfolder WAV. All created in the Music (My Music) folder.
However, dumping 2500 MP3s in one location is not very practical. Say you're looking for a specific one and you don't remember the name. So, it is probably a wise thing to make subfolders in the MP3 folder too! Think musical genre or artist or whatever is relevant to you. During the copying (or moving) process you can weed out the duplicates and you'll have the advantage that YOU control the deleting and not a computer program.
This can be a huge undertaking, yet if you organize the organizing you'll be off to a good start.
Hope this helps.
P.S. If you don't know how to do the basics of creating a folder and/or copying and moving, I'm sure that with the help of this forum we'll get you there.
Sep 25, 2008 03:34 am nightcap--i know my way around windows. something didn't come across in my initial post, i think.
i think i tried to copy the folder. i either copy-pasted it or else tried to cut-paste it. i just don't remember. i was watching something on tv at the time. the issue is that the process STOPPED when it hit a file that wouldn't transfer. it was about 70 percent done transferring to my new drive when i got an 'access denied' message on one file. at that point, the transfer stopped.
but i used either cut/paste or copy/paste. it's just that the process got interrupted. i'm neurotic, so some unreasonable part of me thinks that maybe the initial folder is, like, not complete now. it's like a weird primitive fear. logically i know that original folder has got to contain the original stuff, but it bothers me that i can't be sure of exactly what windows did when the transfer failed. it's like a fear of daddy longlegs. you know they're not venomous, but they're attached to your general fear of spiders.
i'd have to go through the original folder and kind of look around until i'm satisfied that everything's still there. unfortunately i'm really lazy and when i thought of doing that i just said 'screw this' and got up and went to do something else. the overwhelm with this huge project was already at its limit, and this little additional headache just instantly made me give up.
i'm going to stay organized...as soon as i organize for the first time. the program i downloaded claims to bypass all system files. it's still strange to imagine just trusting that, though.
sounds like you're saying i could do a search for all of one filetype and then grab those results from the search window and then dragging and dropping them into a new folder? i never thought of that. i've never moved anything directly out of the search field before. but that would do it, wouldn't it. if i searched all jpegs and all jpgs, when the process was done i could literally drag all my pictures to one new drive?
it sounds like a good idea on the surface--i'm really tempted. but the more i think about it, the more i think i'd regret it. the pics are arranged in SOME sort of order right now--at the very least they're arranged by time period, just by virtue of being in different folders attached to different eras-- and that would undo all of that.
so there seems to be no real solution here. anything i would do would be a headache in one way or the other. there's probably no way to do this without putting three months of nightly work in.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Sep 25, 2008 08:57 pm Well, you can go to the original folder and look it over to see if it looks complete. If you did a cut/paste then it might not be. But normally when a function such as that is terminated it will not have deleted the original at all. Compare the two folders to see if the original is indeed larger by about 30%, that is another good gauge.
If the transfer was terminated due to one particular file simply go into the original folder and select all the files after that one and then copy them over.
This is the main reason I use PowerDesk Pro. It avoids any mistakes when an error in transfer occurs by not deleting anything until the task is 100% complete without error's.
NightcapVeni, MIDI, ViciMember
Since: Jul 02, 2008
Sep 25, 2008 10:34 pm fortymile, I didn't want to put you down, nor did I assume that you were clueless about Windows, but after reading your post twice it did sound like it. Sorry for misinterpreting what you wrote.
Yes, you can drag all files in your search result to a new folder or drive, but then you'll have them all in one place. If that's not what you want, this option would only make things worse.
Nevertheless, my take on organizing your files is still valid. It may be a long stretch, yet in the future you'll save a lot of time, and effort, finding what you are looking for and be grateful that you decided to clean up your files.
Sep 26, 2008 05:57 pm noize, good point on comparing size. i will just do that. i may not be able to find the culprit file, the one that triggered the failure, because the main folder contains many nested folders. i can try, though.
hmm i just read my initial post again. i thought it was fairly clear that the confusion was only about aborted copy/pastes and cut/pastes, which is not usually a problem most people run into as far as i know. but whatever. yeah i agree with you that getting organized and then staying organized is important.
