non-audio question - duplicate file consolidation

[Lunch Money]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of completely restructuring the way I keep files, do backups, etc. The main reason for this is that my backups are a mess. They're all here, but they're all in different places. For one reason or another, sometimes I've had to backup my entire "My Documents" very quickly (ie. dodgy hard drive, had to give'er). On top of that, sometimes I think "yup, about that time" and just back up without remembering if I have the whole works or if something's missing. Then when I got my laptop, I transferred some backup duties to that puppy, but I also used it on its own without syncing to the desktop.

To make a long story short:

What is the best freeware application to compare a whole slew of potentially duplicate files and nuke the duplicates (with confirmation, obviously)? Even if the leftovers end up in an assortment of directories, I will have all those directories in ONE location, so it'll be a matter of manually consolidating them afterward.

Anybody?

Greg

[scuzzphut]

I have found spaceman99 to be very useful.

There's a 30 day trial which might be all you need. Igf you like it , it's only $15

http://www.extrabit.com/spaceman99/

[Lunch Money]

Looks ideal. I'll give it a try and get back to you.

Greg

[Lunch Money]

Worked like a charm! The only thing that sucked was that by marking according to "newest" files, any files that were burnt to CD (and then copied back to hard drive for this consolidation project) were marked as newer. No biggie, though, as the program made it easy to be aware of which directories had duplicates, and then you could choose to delete the "newer" one if you wanted anyhow.

When I come into some money, I'll have to remember to send some their way.

Greg