Software

[Billsotx]

Is there a program that will find duplicate files, folders and jpgs and combine and/or delete them? Any help is appreciated. ~Bill

[TexasJack]

Look for WinDirStat (free).

[Dwight]

On your Windows start button there is a search function (or "find", . . . depending on your version).

Get the little dog up on the screen by following the prompt.

In the parameter window type *.* and hit "enter".

Go get a cup of coffee and maybe a couple doughnuts as this will take a few minutes at least.

When it is done, . . . go to your "view" tab and select details, . . . double click the "name" column, . . . it sorts alphabetically, . . . and you can spend the next few hours perusing down that list to get rid of all your duplicates.

Or, . . . you can buy a bigger hard drive, . . . and do like me, . . . not worry or care about duplicates.

May God bless,

Dwight

[Billsotx]

Wow ... *.* brings up 0ver 7,000 somethings: .log, .dat.. .psf, .itl, .itdb, .ipa, .exe, .one, and slew of zip files, then some docx, and jpgs, but they aren't alphabetical. I know what docx and jpgs and pdfs are, but I'm clueless to the others. Never did see a dog???

[billybopp]

LOL. There are 1001 file extensions out there(and then a bunch more for good measure). And even us pros don't know what ALL of them are. If you don't know, don't delete it!

Bill

[Billsotx]

I know I don't need to be in that sector and won't delete those kinds of things. The mess I'm trying to organize is on a ext. HD, just files, folders and jpgs from 3 different computers - saved over the last decade or so - it may be better to just let it remain a mess, pigeon hole it for a few years and then deep six it.

I'll look at the WinDirStat for a few more days before I quit it. I appreciate the help.

[Dwight]

Back when we had 40 meg hard drives, . . . or paid $175 for one of those huge 80 meg ones, . . . I routinely went through my total of 120 megs in a similar fashion as I showed earlier.

I would whack anything in a doc, xls, jpg, bmp, or other familiar extensions, . . . if it was a duplicate or if I knew it would not ever be needed again.

Sometimes it did wonders for me, . . . sometimes I wondered what the heck I just did.

Thankfully, . . . with today's hard drives having such great capabilities, . . . I just don't bother any more, . . . (BUT, . . . I have really learned how to use the "search" function).

Please do take to heart the good advice Billybop gave you about not whacking those you don't know.

You can also go over to the column marked "Size", . . . double click on it, . . . it'll bring the "big" files to the top and you can see what is hogging all your HD space if that is a problem.

May God bless,

Dwight

[Billsotx]

Thanks Dwight, I'm just trying to do some organizing.

[Northmount]

You can sort by any column, just by clicking on its header. Click again on the same header and it reverses the sort direction. So like Dwight says, can sort filenames alphabetically too.

Tom

[Dwight]

I don't remember the DOS command, . . . but there was one similar, . . . that's where I learned it, . . . back in the days of 5 1/4 inch floppy drives and Win 3.0,............

May God bless,

Dwight

[johnv474]

For anyone visiting this thread in the future, CloneSpy (Windows) and FSLint (Linux) do a very good job of finding duplicates, even if the names are different. You can limit your search to certain directories and delete either all but the newest, or all but the oldest.