Duplicate files - again

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  • Dave2002
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 18045

    Duplicate files - again

    I wonder what one has to do to draw app developers' attentions to problems and possible innovations for use with their software. I still find Gemini - the original version - which finds file duplicates (including folders, and exact duplicates) useful - though I never bothered with Gemini 2 - which will also find "near" duplicates. I don't want to know about "near" duplicates, as then there's a danger that I'll delete an original - "good" version, and keep the smaller lossy version - possible particularly with audio, video and photo files.

    What I do find is that if I run Gemini I discover the potential to clear a lot of storage space off my laptop, which would be very helpful. However, often what I'd really like to do is, having noted the large amount of space eligible for deletion, to back some of it off, and then either delete all of the copies of each file or folder, or to keep just one copy of each. As this functionality isn't provided by Gemini, I tend not to do anything. I really would like a listing of the large files which are found.

    My reasoning is that Gemini draws my attention to large blocks of storage for consideration, which I do not necessarily want to forget. I have other machines - and I like to make sure that data is not lost between the machines. I may want only one copy of each file or folder on my laptop, or I may decide that if I've got copies elsewhere I can afford to delete all of the duplicates.

    So my gripe with Gemini is that the assumption is that I want to delete files - but it doesn't take into account the needs of laptop users who may have other storage or systems where other file copies are stored - and it then doesn't make it particularly easy to process the files once noted as possible deletion candidates. Rather than only being given a choice of file options for deletion, I would prefer it if there were also an option for each file or folder to have a copy backed up to an external file store, such an external SSD - also noting that nowadays it's possible to have an SSD which has more storage than the computer being backed up at reasonable cost. Then I could be sure that the remaining files on the laptop were really ones I want to keep, and that nothing had been inadvertently deleted.

    I do try to keep backups and multiple copies to avoid major problems, but the kind of feature I'm envisaging would save a lot of time and possible frustration.
  • MrGongGong
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 18357

    #2
    One has to be careful of these things as some things that appear to be duplicates turn out not to be
    but this works fine for me

    dupeGuru is a cross-platform (Linux, OS X, Windows) GUI tool to find duplicate files in a system. It’s written mostly in Python 3 and has the peculiarity of using multiple GUI toolkits, all using the same core Python code. On OS X, the UI layer is written in Objective-C and uses Cocoa. On Linux & Windows, it’s written in Python and uses Qt5.

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    • Dave2002
      Full Member
      • Dec 2010
      • 18045

      #3
      The Duplicate File Finder (free in the basic version) available from the Apple App store seems to work OK - at finding the duplicates, but I haven't determined if it's better at providing a strategy for what happens next. It does appear that files which are deleted are moved to the Trash - so one approach might be to allow that to happen, and then to copy any files which might still be wanted (but for other storage devices or computers) back out to external drive tfrom that location.

      If backups are taken frequently enough, then the chances of losing files are reduced, but it is easy to forget to do backups regularly enough and with closely spaced timings. Tools such as Time Machine are not guaranteed to work, and in any case are less convenient for laptops - another reason why I think many of us are too lax in our approach to this kind of issue.

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      • MrGongGong
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 18357

        #4
        Originally posted by Dave2002 View Post
        The Duplicate File Finder (free in the basic version) available from the Apple App store seems to work OK - at finding the duplicates, but I haven't determined if it's better at providing a strategy for what happens next. It does appear that files which are deleted are moved to the Trash - so one approach might be to allow that to happen, and then to copy any files which might still be wanted (but for other storage devices or computers) back out to external drive tfrom that location.

        If backups are taken frequently enough, then the chances of losing files are reduced, but it is easy to forget to do backups regularly enough and with closely spaced timings. Tools such as Time Machine are not guaranteed to work, and in any case are less convenient for laptops - another reason why I think many of us are too lax in our approach to this kind of issue.
        I think you are over complicating things
        software like Dupeguru will tell you what it "thinks" (it can't really "think" it's a load of code) is a duplicate
        then YOU decide what to do

        but


        DON'T TRUST TIME MACHINE

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