OT: Duplicate file removal/condense folders

[Trimdoner]

I know this has nothing to do with NetObjects, but I also know that the
people who frequent these groups are a mine of information.

Over the years, I've built up a large repository of backup folders. (I
backup all my NOF work/data/images folders etc monthly, so I have folders
Aug2002 - Jan2007 plus some others) All are on a second hard drive installed
in my pc, plus mirrored onto a USB hard drive. This is in addition to daily
incremental backups using Acronis, which I've used for the last year.

By the very nature of the folders being backed up, a lot of files are
duplicated, sometimes over several months.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a software utility (cheap or preferably
free!) that is capable of identifying duplicate files reliably? If I was
sure of being able to clear only duplicates - not just the oldest version of
e.g a .nod file, then I could consolidate a lot of the spurious stuff.
I realise there's a lot of stuff listed on Google, but would rather have an
opinion from someone who's actually used a particular utility.

Thanks,

Ken

[Karl Strieby]

Trimdoner wrote:
> I know this has nothing to do with NetObjects, but I also know that the
> people who frequent these groups are a mine of information.
>
> Over the years, I've built up a large repository of backup folders. (I
> backup all my NOF work/data/images folders etc monthly, so I have folders
> Aug2002 - Jan2007 plus some others) All are on a second hard drive installed
> in my pc, plus mirrored onto a USB hard drive. This is in addition to daily
> incremental backups using Acronis, which I've used for the last year.
>
> By the very nature of the folders being backed up, a lot of files are
> duplicated, sometimes over several months.
> Does anyone have any suggestions for a software utility (cheap or preferably
> free!) that is capable of identifying duplicate files reliably? If I was
> sure of being able to clear only duplicates - not just the oldest version of
> e.g a .nod file, then I could consolidate a lot of the spurious stuff.
> I realise there's a lot of stuff listed on Google, but would rather have an
> opinion from someone who's actually used a particular utility.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken

Hi Ken,

I can only offer the following advice:

Having too many backups of any particular file beats the heck out of
having too few, or (0).

Disk space is cheap nowadays. Don't sweat having duplicate copies of
data. The amount of disk wasted by duplicated data is truly
insignificant compared to the risk of not having it available when (not
if) one or more of your primary working hard drives fails and you
discover that a sole backup copy got corrupted.

Been there, done that, did not get the t-shirt :-).



--
Cheers,
Karl

http://www.k-c-p.com/

[Garret Mott]

Hi -

Duplicate File Detection:

WinMerge. It's freeware & works beautifully. Not only will it compare
files, but will compare folders & list which files are different.

Binary & compressed files can only be compared. Text files (incl. html,
etc.) can not only be compared, but give you a line by line comparison & you
can copy from one to the other to make them the same.

I work with several other developers & occasionally code gets out of synch
(someone updates an older version 'cause they didn't check out the most
recent) - it works like a charm.

http://winmerge.org/

Garret Mott

Auto-Mate Software www.automatesoftware.com
Northeast DataFlex Consortium www.nedataflex.com

[Trimdoner]

Many thanks, Karl and Garret.

Karl, your way of thinking re backups mirrors mine - I forgot to mention all
the backups are also stored on dvd. (Belt, braces and extra string ) More
than once has a long forgotten backup saved hours of work, or an old email
or document been resurrected to prove a particular point.
It's just that time of year for 'spring cleaning', and apart from
documents/work etc, I know I have many duplicates of things like NOF
software updates, plus other purchased software with associated updates.
Using Windows search as an example, I found 9 copies of my original NOF9
download, plus I've already got 4 of NOF 10. And that's without the
dvd's..................

Garret, thanks for pointing out Winmerge. It looks more or less exactly what
I wanted, and even though I've only played with it for about ten minutes, it
looks easy to use. I liked the way each file is marked as duplicate or
unique, making it fairly simple to create one 'master' backup folder.

Thanks,

Ken

"Garret Mott" <Garret_at_AutoMateSoftware_dot_com> wrote in message
news:eqhsit$f791@flsun90netnews01.netobjects.com.. .
> Hi -
>
> Duplicate File Detection:
>
> WinMerge. It's freeware & works beautifully. Not only will it compare
> files, but will compare folders & list which files are different.
>
> Binary & compressed files can only be compared. Text files (incl. html,
> etc.) can not only be compared, but give you a line by line comparison &
you
> can copy from one to the other to make them the same.
>
> I work with several other developers & occasionally code gets out of synch
> (someone updates an older version 'cause they didn't check out the most
> recent) - it works like a charm.
>
> http://winmerge.org/
>
> Garret Mott
>
> Auto-Mate Software www.automatesoftware.com
> Northeast DataFlex Consortium www.nedataflex.com
>
>