DigitalVolcano Software Support

Hello Duplicate Cleaner team -

I am very happy with how DC4 helps me manage my "Family Archivist" business. We get hard drives with copies on copies of duplicate files all over the place! Duplicate Cleaner makes it easy to clean that up especially with its ability to delete from within ZIP files. However, rewriting the archive for each file deleted is a hugely significant bottleneck. Will the feature be enhanced to delete all selected files at once requiring only one rewrite of the ZIP? This is the primary new feature I'm looking for in the next paid version. Until then I am not likely to upgrade.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

---abobymous

What version of DC4?
Are you deleting to Recycle Bin?

rewriting the archive for each file deleted

Could you explain that scenario?

It looks to me, that all the files from within the ZIP that are scheduled for deletion are being deleted all at one time?

Thank you for the response. The "Delete to Recycle Bin" box is unchecked. The "via Windows Shell" box is checked.

I've seen it take over an hour to delete 1,000 files from a 1 GB archive on the local hard drive. It seems like, at that rate, the ZIP library being used may be editing the archive one by one. Performance over a gigabit NAS is not appreciably different.

Thanks again for looking into this,
---abobymous

OK, you're right.

The ZIP I tested with was too small for it to be apparent.
(Tested now with a 500 MB ZIP, & created ~200 dups for it to find.)

A temporary file is created, initially.
Then, for every file being deleted, a separate temporary file is written to (& ends up being deleted).

That initial temporary file is recreated, in my case, 200 times.
Similarly it is then written back (renamed) to the original file name, the same number of times.


So I guess now the question is, is this a function of how a ZIP deletion works or if this is the way that DC is doing things?


(That initial temporary file has a huge number of "modifies", 200K in my case. Not sure just what that is?)


(Also note that in Options | More Options -> Advanced, there is a setting dealing with ZIP file "space threshold" [which I'm not quite sure what that means, offhand]. In my case, not knowing, I bumped from its default to 1000.)


Deleting - a directory tree - using ZIP, takes only an instant. That was with a total of ~600 files/directories.
Thinking that because it happened to be an entire tree, it was so quick.

Deleting an individual file in the parent of the ZIP was actually slower & was more "involved" (a relatively, substantially, higher [~600 vs 10] modified count).

Thank you for confirming. It's nice to know I'm not crazy.

Deleting multiple files within an archive with a single rewrite would be a tremendous enhancement. For those of us that pay for the Pro version, DC4 is a useful tool. Such an enhancement to how ZIPs (and other archive formats) are handled would be further incentive to continue with the Pro versions.

When should we expect the upgrade?

Have a nice day,
---Bob

Bumping to top again for a 5.x feature enhancement.

Improving the efficiency of multiple file deletions from archives or entire directory deletions from archives would be very nice. Even if these improvements could only be for ZIP archives at least that's an improvement.

Thank you for considering this feature upgrade!

If you try unchecking the 'Via windows shell' setting it will use a different technique to remove the zip entries. More helpfully, it will delete the zip file in one operation if all the entries are marked to be removed.

Adding my voice to efficient deletes within zip! I think, for the sophistication otherwise present in DC5, it should be an expected feature for power users.