Finding and Deleting Duplicate Files on Computer Hard drives

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I have several hundred gigabytes of video and photos on three hard drives in my PC – some of them (probably at least 80 – 100 GB in total) are duplicates, which I backed up but then lost track of.

Can anyone recommend the best software (freeware maybe?) for finding exact duplicate files so I can delete them?

I can copy all the files to one disc if necessary.

I am hoping to organise everything in a more sensible fashion once I have deleted the duplicates.

Thanks in advance for the advice

Andrew

[CraftersOfLight]

The newest version of Google’s Picasa http://picasa.google.com/does a good job of finding the videos and photos on your drives and help you manage them, and it is free. It presents thumbnails, by folder, of each in an easy to navigate menu. As you scan through them you can review the file properties and see if the “duplicates” are true (size, create/save date, etc)and delete the ones you do not want. You can also view your photos and videos within Picasa to help with your sorting.

I had the same problem with about 250GB of filesand it has worked for me so far. I tend to use it as my file system for these types now.

Picasa lets you caption each file, and each folder,(within Picasa) allowing you to tag for save or move instructions. Using these “notes” you can then file/sort them. You can then edit these captions when your settled on your file system.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very muchfor taking the trouble to give me so much
information – I have just downloaded it and am waiting for it to finish
trawling through my hard drives – it seems to crash every 5 minutes or
so – then gives the option to ‘hide the file’ – I presume they are
corrupt or something.

How does the program work? Does it list all identical files consecutively?

Many Thanks

Andrew

[Author]

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