Multiple File Scanner - Network

[GadgetBoy]

Hey all:

Over the years, I have amassed a significant amount of content across my home network. I am certain I have hundreds, if not thousands of duplicate files (i.e. photos, music and video files, etc.) across the drives on the various PCs on my network.

Getting them all into one place will make it easier for searching and backing up properly.

Rather than start researching from scratch, are they any programs that anyone here would recommend? I believe I have seen programs like this in the past, but am not sure if they would work across a network.

I'm not sure if this is something others here have experienced, and if so, how they fixed it.

Thanks in advance,
GB

 

[electron]

Interesting question, let me know if you find something useful.

 

[tmbrown97]

+1 here - I've started that search a million times but never finished... with over 10,000 digital photos and 100+GB of MP3's I really need a way to identify duplicates. Even better if you can identify files which are identical in content even if named differently!

 

[video321]

What you want is known as deduplication software, but I don't think you'll find anything worth getting for a simple home network.

...actually, I just remembered that XP support tools have a program called dupfinder, but I've never used it so I don't know if it only works with same file names or if it could use checksums (which now that I think about it is a way you could do it yourself with a spreadsheet; although it would be tedious.) Also, check sourceforge for anything there.

 

[GadgetBoy]

Found a couple of progs.

Running them now on my network - will report back my results...

 

[drozwood90]

wow, it has changed since I last used it, but I've used dupkiller:
http://www.dupkiller.net/index_en.html

--Dan