DigitalVolcano Software Support

First time I have ever tried to delete duplicates was about 2 mos ago using a BrandX Smart filefinder (big name well advertised program) on this computer belonging to my wife. To my surprise there were approximately 50,000 duplicates! I spent 3 weeks tagging duplicates since I was told by one of their techs that I had to manually (meaning one by one) delete these files! Their program choked and their tech said it was not designed to handle this many duplicates. DV located these and other dups in a matter of seconds while it took BrandX about an hour to find them. A sorry, time consuming experience but it is not over yet.

A friend told me about DV and I am so elated at what I have experienced so far. In the last 2 days I have located about 49,500 duplicates. I have learned these files backed up to an external drive that was used when this system was changed from WinXP to Win7. Apparently the tech who did this (I am living in Honduras) had some problems loading the new OS or reinstalling from the external drive. He attempted reinstalling the backed up files 8 times the best I can figure from looking at the log on DV. So the problem I am dealing with is a huge number of dup files and like one other person who posted here...there are 911 protected files out of the first attempt of 5,000 deletes. Undoubtedly there are many system duplications due to the change of operating systems because I do not think the tech (nor did I) really know what needed to be backed up onto the external drive before doing the Win7 install...and it is clear he backed up system and other files that he then tried to reinstall multiple times.

So how in the world does a non tech person like me now safely unravel this kind of mess? I do not want to unwittingly get rid of system, .exe or .dll files however it seems that by doing line by line comparisons (file dates created, file sizes, and most certainly the dates pointing to the March 20, 2014 Win7 install) that I should be able to delete these type of files??? Being careful to leave one of the duplicates? That would involve changing my DV parameters...and makes me tantamount to a 75 year old bomb defuser with shaky hands!

Sorry if I am being wordy with this. Thanks for replies!

O.K. please let me rephrase my question...and say that since I have not received any comments, I proceeded to follow my own intuition and changed the Option selection involving protection for .exe, .dll and program files. I went ahead and deleted the 911 protected files I mentioned in the original Post.

What concerns me is this...if DV locates 4 files in a group...all with the identical hash, if I save one of the 4 files and delete the other 3 files, am I safe even though this group may involve system files? Regardless of the file extensions I would think if they were all identical and one of them was saved from deletion, this would be a safe move. Please correct me if I am wrong!!!

Thanks!

(I'm not clear on what you're saying, where the files are, what you're trying to do...)

If these files are in "Windows.old", How do I remove the Windows.old folder?


(I've always been wary of manually "cleaning up" older Windows related files, because, at least with my file manager, I often find myself redirected from a "old" directory, into a current one, due to (various) links used by Windows & possible mis-interpretation by my file manager.)


> safely unravel this kind of mess?

I like to start small.
Instead of searching everywhere for everything, concentrate on a more discrete set of directories (which it seems you've located already) & start your work with that set of directories/files.

In the Search Path, assuming one of your Paths is C:\Windows\, you can set the 'Scan Against Self' flag to "No". That way it will ignore dups within C:\Windows\ itself, & only find dups of C:\Windows\ in your other Search Paths.


> if DC locates 4 files in a group...all with the identical hash, if I save one of the 4 files and delete the other 3 files, am I safe even though this group may involve system files?

That probably depends on where the dups are located.
If the dups are in a "Windows.old" type location, or somewhere specifically outside of where Windows itself is installed (including Special Folders), then thinking you should be OK in deleting those dups.

Thanks for the reply and your insight!

These dups have been snagged by DV and they are not from any one particular location as I can see. The ones that have been most troublesome in my decisions to delete seem to be those that as I have looked more closely at the files themselves...they are associated with 1) printers I no longer have; 2) programs I no longer use and even software that is almost 10 years since I was authorized to use it (which came as a surprise to me that it was even still on this system). Truthfully, Rube, you mention file managers and I do not believe I even use one (or know how to use one!). I have just saved files from My Documents to subfolders of my naming and hope I can remember which subfolder I stuffed a file into. That is a sad admission but true because I have never learned how to do things any better and at my age I just seem to get by with what I know which is the bad file keeping habits I have taught myself.

Nothing seems to have been disrupted as of yet, or as it seems! Most of the stuff I am wading thru right now are WMF, PCX, Bitmap or JPEG images for birthday events, holidays, weddings and general...you name it and there are files with images for you (providing the user even knows how to find them buried in their system!). DV has located them all and I am being as careful as I can and using my best judgement in choosing which to remove and which to keep. I am now down to 32,000 duplicate files!

I will say it again that this is a great program. Thanks!