Wednesday, January 24, 2007

CloneSpy cleans up duplicate files - Do you know how much HD space you're wasting?

I've noticed a tendency that comes from larger, cheaper hard rives.  I pay less attention to duplicates of data, music, and especially, photos.  What difference does it make when you have a half terabyte of storage?

Those of us running on laptops may be a little more sensitive, but I found a little utility called CloneSpy that's opened my eyes a little.

CloneSpy is a duplicate file-finder that doesn't just search for duplicate file names, it searches for duplicate bits.  That is, it searches for duplicate files that may even have different file names but contain the same date.

  I thought I'd take a break from pruning and write about it because it's already found 225MB of duplicate files and it's only gone through five percent of "My Documents."  Yikes?  I feel like I'm reasonably careful to avoid saving duplicate information too, but apparently not.

CloneSpy works pretty intuitively and seems be careful to avoid letting you delete important stuff.

My only beef so far with it is that you have to make a decision on each group of duplicate files, rather than handling them in a larger batch.  On the other hand, I suppose that keeps people like me from becoming "delete happy" and losing something important.

 

via Download Squad

2 comments:

nothing said...

Jeff,

I'm not sure you'll read this since this post was from a long time ago. Just in case...a tool I use daily to help me prevent duplicate files, mostly documents, is Microsoft OneNote 2007. I used to keep all my notes in a text file, Word documents, PDF's, and try to keep them within an organized folder system. But that was before I discovered OneNote. It's been the best thing since sliced-bread to me. It's like a document repository and so much more. All the documents I mentioned above have been moved into OneNote (one central location - not all over my computer). I can record meetings (audio and/or video) right in OneNote at the same time I'm taking notes. It has many more features that have really changed the way I work (in a positive, time-efficient way).

I know this is a little off subject since it's an application and not a tool similar to the one you posted. However, I use it for consolidating my files an so much more. I hope this helps.

Jeff said...

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. I LOVE OneNote 2007, especially its integration with Outlook 2007. Thanks for mentioning it. I use it daily and consider it one of my "must have" apps.

I don't use it for a documents repository though; since it keeps a copy in the the OneNote Notebooks directory and another in a cache under ...documents and settings..., it can get kind of bulky.

I use it for all my personal research, all my project planning, doing online reading, like from journals, offline, etc.

I'm glad you're as pleased with it as I am! Thanks for taking the time to comment.