anyone know a program for handling dupllicate files
Home > Home Recording Forum > Computers & Software > anyone know a program for handling dupllicate files
Posted on Aug 10, 2007 10:40 pm
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
once, long ago, when i moved stuff, i made copies of everything and didn't erase them. my music computer is just stuffed, and half off the stuff i don't need. but i'm not sure how to tackle this HUGE task of finding and eliminating duplicate files.
i would need something that actually scans the files, not just the names, and says 'yes, these two files are identical, despite the fact that you've renamed one.' or which tells me that two identically-named files differ in their content (and i would want it to tell me which was most recently modified)
i think it might be a lost cause. i've played with some freeware, but none of them do what i need it to do. anyone ever go through this process? how'd you do it?
[ Back to Top ]
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Aug 10, 2007 11:59 pm I'd just search the drive or folder for *.* (or whatever type of file you're talking about), and sort the results by file size. Then things that are the same size would be next to each other in the resulting Windows Explorer view.
Give adjacent search results a quick listen to determine if one is truly a duplicate and zap the dupe if it is. The last modified date column in Windows explorer will show you which is more recent.
As far as automated ways of doing this, I can't think of any. I've never seen such an app, or at least haven't used such a feature in an existing app.
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Aug 11, 2007 12:42 am hmm 'comp' I think does that... it's a DOS command still included in XP I think
www.ss64.com/nt/comp.html
Aug 11, 2007 02:37 am no way can i do it manually. we're talking like 40 gigs of files. documents, pictures. a whole hard drive got copied and split up in different ways, the folders left lying around. there's no way i could complete this in a year. i need a program to do everything for mme, basically
Aug 11, 2007 05:38 am all i have to offer is right click > properties and see if the dates AND file size match up...if they do, pick the one on the left and delete the other.....
second option is again right click > properties and delete the one with the older 'born on date'.
Aug 11, 2007 07:35 am i know that's an option, but no way, not for me. too much stuff. :(
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Aug 11, 2007 12:32 pm I've used a program called beyond compare 2. It will compare files, or directories. It may take a bit to get used to, but I think it'll speed you up compared to manually searching / comparing. You still will have to go through it all though.
I'm thinking you are in for a huge undertaking. Duplication of data is always a risky proposition.
I guess there is a small market for a home grown program:
1. get list from two main directories
2. find duplicates
3. delete older of each duplicate pair
I bet that wouldn't be too hard to write, for a utility programmer . . .
Something like here:
www.codewalkers.com/c/a/F...subdirectories/
would be a place to start, i'm betting PHP could get lists of files in directories, store them, then get lists from other directories, then store them, and compare the two arrays, and delete the duplicates . . .
could be done in visual basic pretty easily too, and prob many other programs.
Aug 11, 2007 04:29 pm i know, it seems like an easy programming challenge.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Aug 11, 2007 11:54 pm forty, I've done it the way Tadpui is talking about and it really did not take that long. And I think I was fairly close to you 40 gig of data as well. It was about half of an 80 gig drive worth of stuff. Although it wasn't done in one evening it did get done in much less then a years time.
