Posted on April 14th, 2009 by Dave Stevenson

Where have all my files gone? An appeal

I turned on my PC this weekend. Nothing remarkable about that: I’ve been turning PCs on and off since I were a lad, mostly without unexpected consequence.

But I’ve been away for a year, and my PC has been turned off the whole time.

In a way it was like greeting an old friend. All the familiar sounds and lights came on when I pushed the button, Windows sprang into life, and I was reminded of how I really, really needed to take something pointy to the blue LED that adorns one of the system fans.

And then I realised that I’m a hopeless idiot. I turned my PC on to find a particular file: a single, paltry Word document. It should have been as simple as typing in a keyword and, a few seconds later, Windows helpfully suggesting a few possibilities. Instead, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In a barn full of haystacks. A padlocked barn. Guarded by the SAS.

I have, at last count, no fewer than three external hard disks, ranging in size from 160 to 500GB, and at least three more small, USB-powered portable disks. I have, courtesy of numerous well-meaning PRs, a backpack full of USB thumbdrives. The total potential storage is well over a terabyte, and probably closer to two.

Which would be fine and great and good and all that, were it not for the hopeless idiot thing I mentioned above. My backup regime largely consisted of dragging and dropping monolithic folders – My Pictures, say – from one disk to the other. A few of my external hard disks have My Documents folders on them. It’s impossible to say whether one is a newer backup than the other, or if they might be exact replicas of each other.

Exact replicas, that is, of the My Documents folder on my main PC, except that folder is probably newer itself, thus rendering my two backups hopelessly obsolete.

Every now and then I come across a folder named “Old”, or “Archive”, or, most uselessly of all “New Folder”. In it will be a collection of Word Files, JPGs with useful names like DSC_3891.jpg and the occasional Outlook .pst file, which itself contains hundreds of emails which might or might not exist somewhere else. It means that I can’t delete anything despite being desperate for space, without individually inspecting all the files and trying to remember if I’ve seen the contents somewhere before. It’s a bit like that card game where you uncover a card, and then try to remember if you’ve seen it somewhere before. Only instead of playing with, let’s say, a dozen cards, you’re playing with a football field’s worth, and all the files are buried under the turf.

All of this suggests three things. First, that my wife should get used to the sight of me, on a Saturday morning, head in my hands, hair sticking from between my fingers, as I mutter quietly to myself about the minute differences between E:\Archive and F:\From Old PC\My Documents\Archive. It also means once all this is sorted out in, I don’t know, December, I’ll have a proper backup regimen involving proper backup software.

Finally, it means you get to help. I have lots of files on my disks that are identical – in literally every way – to other files in other folders on other disks, and I would very much like to avoid wearing out my mouse by having to double-click on all of them. Is there a piece of software out there that can analyse my files and let me know where all my space is going, and how I can claim it back?

Over to you.

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15 Responses to “ Where have all my files gone? An appeal ”

Where have all my files gone: an appeal | Real Rumors Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
[...] Where have all my files gone: an appeal 14.04.2009 | Posted in Computer World I turned on my PC this weekend. Nothing remarkable about that: I’ve been turning PCs on and off since I were a lad, mostly without unexpected consequence.But I’ve been away for a year, and my PC has been turned off the whole time.In a way it was like greeting an old friend. All the familiar sounds and lights came on when I pushed the button, Windows sprang into life, and I was reminded of how I really, really needed to take something pointy to the blue LED that adorns one of the system fans.And More: Where have all my files gone: an appeal [...]
dark hared lord Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
if you haven’t needed to look at any of it for the past twelve months just shifty your (appropriate and setimental) jpg’s then bite the bullet and reformat the rest, re-install (what you might actually use) and get on with the rest of your life.
Mike Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
A first step may be something like dupkiller (http://www.dupkiller.net/index_en.html), Easy Duplicate Finder (http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/) or Winmerge (http://winmerge.org/index.php). They all offer different ways of identifying duplicates. Similarly Clonespy (http://www.clonespy.com/?Features) will use the checksum to identify duplicate files.

For images specifically you can use Duplifinder (http://www.codeplex.com/DupliFinder) which uses image information to find duplicates.

Any of those should help you at least begin the process!!!

Good luck
Jens Raaby Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I would try the freeware program DupKiller which as its name suggests, kills duplicates.
TiredGeek Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Try something like Copernic desktop search to index all the files, then use it to find what you’re looking for. It’ll bring back the location of every file of a particular name on every drive you have even if they’re not connected at the time. Use that with a duplicate file finder and you’ll regain a lot of space.
All4nothing Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I’ve used NoClone before (http://noclone.net/) which is quite good, especially the ability to search across multiple drives…

The free version is alright, but has its limitations… usually it’s enough for a single user, which considering you only ever really need to use it once, it appears a bit of a pain to pay for it…
Caravans Says:
April 15th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Also I have only tried noclone but unlike All4othing I can’t say I found it too useful. I couldn’t afford to buy it and found the free version to be a bit too limited, maybe the full version would be of more use to you.
Gwyn Evans Says:
April 15th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I find that “Beyond Compare” is ideal for that sort of thing.
Computer repair Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Thanks for this informative blog.Nice one.
Dave Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Some cracking suggestions there, folks.

I’ll give them a whirl and let you know what works.

D
Mike Russell Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Hi,
The first response was, I feel, a pretty pragmatic one. However, work is work and if what you have represents any significant amount of it, that you can’t obtain elsewhere, then a sort-out, however unpleasant is what is needed.
I have hundreds of thousands of files, stretching back to the early Eighties. Fortunately, I’ve always been fairly structured.. I bought NoClone, even the Pro edition. It is A: expensive and B: potentially destructive. It falls into the category of duplicate finders that lists duplicate files on lines. This is fine for two, or three hundred files, but you have no overview. I also looked at Araxis Merge, which is what I would say a proper duplicate finder (it also handles internal duplicate section reintegration within documents, plus three way merging), but when you see the price, you might not be quite so impressed. I finally settled on a Swedish program from Pilot Software called “Clone Tools”. It is graphical, displaying tree structures and is byte-by-byte; anything less than a binary comparison is useless. It cost around $40 which is good and there is a free mode, that allows you to try it out. Play with it until you can see what it is doing exactly. If you do have really large numbers of files, then what I did is to simply keep zipping up daughter directories (trying to do it all at once will crash Windoze, or tie it up for so long, you won’t know the difference). I then used Clone Tools to merge the current, non-archive stuff. If I need anything, I can go looking in zips for it (I use Directory Opus 9, instead of the knuckle-dragging Windows Explorer). What I found was even software like CloneTools, or NoClone (I’d guess Araxis would be no better) will take an age to open all those files and compare them. There isn’t really any do-it-all, or set-it-and-forget-it solution to this. As mentioned, it’s a one-time operation, so unless you provide a service, it isn’t worth the expense, or effort to write the software. Oh yes, read NoClone’s policies VERY, VERY carefully before paying them..
MartinC Says:
April 17th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Have you tried Winmerge? Its on the PC Pro coverdisk and will compare folders as well as files, giving you a list of changes ie which files are only on side or the other, dates edited, and if its a plain text file you can see the differences. With binary files such as pictures and video, you’d have to check for the differences manually but you’d get a long way just getting rid of the exact duplicates where the dates match.
Allan Says:
May 1st, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Try Directory Report
http://www.file-utilities.com
It will find your duplicate files, show where your disk space is going, and synchronze directories
JH Says:
May 14th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Sorry late, unless file genuine duplicate, will have different date/time, if ono by few mins. Had some work, did it in 2 unsynched places, nightmare trying to find which version was new. Managed it eventually but even then had to check i/case had done something silly. Even then lost some data, but a date based program should do quite well.
PC Tech Says:
October 12th, 2009 at 2:59 am
I’m using particulary “Copernic Desktop Search”, – Nice software. Recommend.