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

Franc Zabkar wrote:

> It's not exactly what you want, but I've just tried this utility:
> http://www.fastsum.com/download.php
>
> I use the DOS Sort command to sort the output, after which I
> extract the duplicate checksums with a QBasic program (see below).

Thanks Franc. I'll try it.

"philo" <philo.TakeThisOut@privacy.net> wrote in
news:#BuFxjsNJHA.4428@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl:


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

I thought I'd spare 98 Guy that statement

> 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

Yes, but you'd have to get your fingers filthy using the Windows
"tools"!

Also, if you are not familiar with the TC (et al) "search"
options, you really should have a look. It's like comparing a
machine gun to a slingshot.

And five minutes is debatable depending on how many files would
be involved.


--
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:Xns9B43146A65C9Athanexit@209.197.15.184...
> "philo" <philo DeleteThis @privacy.net> wrote in
> news:#BuFxjsNJHA.4428@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl:
>
>
> > It would be easy enough to look for such utilities on
> > Google
>
> I thought I'd spare 98 Guy that statement
>
> > 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
>
> Yes, but you'd have to get your fingers filthy using the Windows
> "tools"!
>
> Also, if you are not familiar with the TC (et al) "search"
> options, you really should have a look. It's like comparing a
> machine gun to a slingshot.
>
> And five minutes is debatable depending on how many files would
> be involved.
>
>
>

Yes, I suppose if one wanted to clean up all the small files that I never
bother with.

I only care about the huge files that I've forgotten about
such as old service packs or entire Linux distros that I've downloaded years
ago.

It only takes a few minutes to clean up all the big stuff

98 Guy <98.RemoveThis@Guy.com> wrote in news:49036945.F214A003@Guy.com:

> 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.

TC (or something equally good and fast at search and compare,
but you'd have to look for a DOS program I'm afraid) is ideal
for that.

> 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.

Your logic is impeccable.

> Then copy the contents of each drive onto a single massive
> drive (each into it's

its

> own directory probably) and then
> aggregate or combine all their contents such that there are
> no duplicate files.

Yup.

> 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.

All that can be set to your preferences in TC.

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

Yup.

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

Unique Filer will auto-delete (or /almost/ auto, confirmation
req'd or something) //identical// files. I use it for images
mainly, but the few times I worked with non-binary files it did
a very good job. Of course, to be ABSOLUTELY sure you have to do
a byte by byte check - which you can do in TC. Unfortunately,
manual intervention/supervision is unavoidable - the exact same
file, if just opened and looked at, may sometimes save with a
difference of 1 byte depending on whether there is a space or a
carriage return at the end, or depending on how Windows feels
like that particular day.

> 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.

Yup.

> 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.

Ever heard of a network? Even I managed to put one together for
about a dozen computers, with a server with daily DAT backup. If
I can do it, anyone can. (OK, someone else did the wiring

> 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.

Well, perhaps you should have devised a well-organized
storage/duplicate-avoidance plan first then? I have a separate
partition for DL'd programs and with one key hit TC shows me if
there are any duplicates after some time has gone by and I can't
remember what's on there anymore. (Needless to say, it's all
properly categorized etc.) So would Unique Filer (which, BTW, I
have mentioned because I have tried about 5 dupe finders -
including very recent ones - and UF is by far the best).

Why is this thread dragging on for so long when it was all clear
from your first post?
Are you looking for someone to do the job for you?


--
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 wrote:

> > It would be easy enough to look for such utilities on
> > Google
>
> I thought I'd spare 98 Guy that statement

What you get are tons and tons of programs that will "catalog" your
files (especially multi-media files - music, movies, etc).

> > you could have done the same with Windows===> find
> >
> > then sorting and deleting as needed

Given perhaps several hundred thousand files on any given drive,
multiply that by 1 to 2 dozen drives, and you're going to spend hours
rounding up, sorting, comparing, and aggregating all the files you want
from all of them.

Perhaps you still don't understand what I'm trying to do.

thanatoid wrote:

> > 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.
>
> Ever heard of a network?

What's that got to do with the paragraph above?

If I have 10 copies of the same .xls or .doc file spread across 10 hard
drives, putting all those drives on a network isin't going to change the
fact that there are 10 copies of the same file accessible to everyone on
the network, instead of just one copy.