Is there a hard drive file organizer that will ...

In message <49029404.B4BBB9F5.DeleteThis@Guy.com>, 98 Guy <98.DeleteThis@Guy.com> writes
>Is there a hard drive file organizer, optimizer, "cleaner", that will
>
>a) identify multiple copies of the same file based on
> - same file name (but perhaps binary identical, perhaps not)
> - different name, but binary identical
[]
Not sure if it will do anything like all you want, but I find David
Taylor's FindDup -
http://www.david-taylor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/software/disk.html#FindDuplicates
- reasonably useful. It certainly lists (see the screenshot at
http://www.david-taylor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/FindDupl.gif
, which also shows that it can look over several drives) size, name,
version number, and so on of the files it has found. I'm not sure it
will find same name but not identical, but as another has said, the
ordinary Windows find function will do that, if you tell it to sort by
name (click on the Name column header) when it's finished searching.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
Lada for sale - see www.autotrader.co.uk

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

> Not sure if it will do anything like all you want, but I find David
> Taylor's FindDup reasonably useful. It certainly lists

It requires that you enter a file-spec to perform the search, and it
appears to not perform a binary compare to tell you that the files are
the same or different. It probably won't find copies of the same file
(binary identical) that have different names.

> .. find same name but not identical, but as another has said,
> the ordinary Windows find function will do that,

I don't want to have to perform manual searches. I'm wondering if there
is a progam that can take generate an inventory of all files (and
probably compute a checksum for each file) and then compare every result
against every other result and allow me to easily identify and
manipulate (move, rename, copy) the duplicates.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG.TakeThisOut@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Dzq5e6bsZwAJFw8S@soft255.demon.co.uk...
> In message <49029404.B4BBB9F5.TakeThisOut@Guy.com>, 98 Guy <98.TakeThisOut@Guy.com> writes
> >Is there a hard drive file organizer, optimizer, "cleaner", that will
> >
> >a) identify multiple copies of the same file based on
> > - same file name (but perhaps binary identical, perhaps not)
> > - different name, but binary identical
> []
> Not sure if it will do anything like all you want, but I find David
> Taylor's FindDup -
>
http://www.david-taylor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/software/disk.html#FindDuplicates
> - reasonably useful. It certainly lists (see the screenshot at
> http://www.david-taylor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/FindDupl.gif
> , which also shows that it can look over several drives) size, name,
> version number, and so on of the files it has found. I'm not sure it
> will find same name but not identical, but as another has said, the
> ordinary Windows find function will do that, if you tell it to sort by
> name (click on the Name column header) when it's finished searching.
> --
> J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985
MB++G.5AL(+++)IS-P--Ch+(p)Ar+T[?]H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
> Lada for sale - see www.autotrader.co.uk
>
> "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
> you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken


Sheesh, your advice is too sensible...
as your sig says (in so many words)
no one will follow it <G>

98 Guy <98 RemoveThis @Guy.com> wrote in news:49029404.B4BBB9F5@Guy.com:

> Is there a hard drive file organizer, optimizer, "cleaner",
> that will
>
> a) identify multiple copies of the same file based on
> - same file name (but perhaps binary identical, perhaps
> not) - different name, but binary identical
> and either follow your rules (eg smart rename) or allow
> you to easily move them around or delete the duplicates
>
> b) identify, catalog or list the version numbers of
> multiple
> copies of the same system files (.exe, dll, etc)
>
> The goal is to use such software (instead of manual
> exploration and file cutting and pasting) to organize and
> aggregate the contents of possibly up to a few dozen hard
> drives.
>
> Most hard drive file organizing software seems to focus on
> cataloging multi-media files rather than perform the
> desired optimizations, file-moves, and file-reductions.

A decent file manager (Total Commander or possibly even the
slightly stripped-down Free Commander) will do most of these
functions. (TC works forever in demo mode.)

Put two drives, directories, subdirectories, or whatever, sorted
by whatever in the two panes and a hit of ONE key will instantly
show you duplicates, etc. Then you can work further with the
results. You can show ALL the files on an entire drive/directory
with 100's of subdirs/etc.) in ONE window (branching) and work
with that.

"Unique Filer" can search for image or non-binary dupes by
content, name, size, etc.

I'm not aware of a dupe search utility that will go as far as
MD5'ing (although one may well exist), but TC will compare any 2
files BY content, byte by byte. Anyway, how many identically-
sized files of the same name are you gonna have that you expect
to be different?


--
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the
votes decide everything.
- Josef Stalin

NB: Not only is my KF over 4 KB and growing, I am also filtering
everything from discussions.microsoft and google groups, so no
offense if you don't get a reply/comment unless I see you quoted
in another post.

"thanatoid" <waiting DeleteThis @the.exit.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9B427DB5FC8F8thanexit@209.197.15.184...
> 98 Guy <98 DeleteThis @Guy.com> wrote in news:49029404.B4BBB9F5@Guy.com:
>
> > Is there a hard drive file organizer, optimizer, "cleaner",
> > that will
> >
> > a) identify multiple copies of the same file based on
> > - same file name (but perhaps binary identical, perhaps
> > not) - different name, but binary identical
> > and either follow your rules (eg smart rename) or allow
> > you to easily move them around or delete the duplicates
> >
> > b) identify, catalog or list the version numbers of
> > multiple
> > copies of the same system files (.exe, dll, etc)
> >
> > The goal is to use such software (instead of manual
> > exploration and file cutting and pasting) to organize and
> > aggregate the contents of possibly up to a few dozen hard
> > drives.
> >
> > Most hard drive file organizing software seems to focus on
> > cataloging multi-media files rather than perform the
> > desired optimizations, file-moves, and file-reductions.
>
> A decent file manager (Total Commander or possibly even the
> slightly stripped-down Free Commander) will do most of these
> functions. (TC works forever in demo mode.)
>
> Put two drives, directories, subdirectories, or whatever, sorted
> by whatever in the two panes and a hit of ONE key will instantly
> show you duplicates, etc. Then you can work further with the
> results. You can show ALL the files on an entire drive/directory
> with 100's of subdirs/etc.) in ONE window (branching) and work
> with that.
>
> "Unique Filer" can search for image or non-binary dupes by
> content, name, size, etc.
>
> I'm not aware of a dupe search utility that will go as far as
> MD5'ing (although one may well exist), but TC will compare any 2
> files BY content, byte by byte. Anyway, how many identically-
> sized files of the same name are you gonna have that you expect
> to be different?
>
>

It would be easy enough to look for such utilities on Google

but by the time you'd find it
install it
and run it...
you could have done the same with Windows===> find

then sorting and deleting as needed

a five minute job at most

thanatoid wrote:

> A decent file manager (Total Commander or possibly even the
> slightly stripped-down Free Commander) will do most of these
> functions. (TC works forever in demo mode.)

I want to distill, aggregate or combine the contents of many hard
drives, with many different types of files located in directories with
names that don't necessarily match other drives.

Because I can't connect more than 1 or 2 extra drives to a system at the
same time, the first step is to perform such an aggregation on each
drive individually.

Then copy the contents of each drive onto a single massive drive (each
into it's own directory probably) and then aggregate or combine all
their contents such that there are no duplicate files.

Files with the same name that are not identical (say, .PST files) would
either be auto-renamed (so they can co-exist in the same destination
directory) or maybe I can set a rule so that, say, if the files are word
..DOC files, then keep only the file with the most recent creation or
modification date. Perhaps I wanted all .DOC files to be aggregated
into a specific destination directory, and all .XLS into another.

Entire directories that have identical contents can be easily identified
and the duplicates removed, leaving only 1 copy (ie MS office clipart
directories).

Files that are identical (exact binary match) but with different names
would be deleted (perhaps with manual guidance).

To go one step further - it would be great to identify file-sets that
have been unpacked from larger archive files and allow me to decide if I
want to keep the file-sets (and delete the archive file) or vice-versa.

Perhaps this task is not so useful for someone who only has a single
computer in his/per possession, but for a SOHO situation where you have
perhaps 5 to 10 years worth of computer use by an office with 2, 5, 10
or 20 people, you tend to build up a collection of hard drives that one
day you want to organize and retrieve the contents of to make them
available to others, and to wipe the original drives before donating or
discarding.

As well, my own working drives are littered with driver, application,
utility and system files (and archive files of each type) that I've
downloaded from the net over the years that I know I have multiple
copies of (and multiple versions) and sorting manually through that mess
would be time consuming.