Can anyone help me identify duplicated photos on PC

[whatdoesntkillyou]

I have hundreds of photos on my PC. Due to my ineptitude I have lots of them on more than once, in different folders. It?s a real mess. Does anyone know if theres a way to identify photos on more than once so I can delete them.

Also what would people recommend to backup images on- disk, usb stick, online somewhere so I have copies in case something happens to my PC?

Hunting for duplicates isn't a technically hard process (I could knock up something to do it pretty quick) but it's not something that Windows comes with. So you'll have to download an app, which means trusting it to rummage through your hard disk drive. Hopefully someone can recommend one of the many that are out there, I can't as I tend to DIY that sort of thing.

As to backing up I always back up to two other locations. I currently use an external disk drive and I burn to CD/DVDs as well.

Backing up to somewhere online would be good as it means that you've got off site backups. So perhaps do that alongside a local backup to an external drive?

Unfortunately once again I can't recommend any backup site in particular...

What are you using (Mac, Windows XP, Vista, Linux) ?

If you are using (say) Windows XP, I'd normally suggest opening the Windows Explorer (file manager) and using "Search" to get all the JPG files (search for *.JPG if the photos are stored as JPG - or use JPEG or whatever if the file type doesn't show as JPG)

You will get a long list of files. If you use the "View" menu and choose "Details" you can then click on the 'Date Modified' heading.

You could then use "View" and "Thumbnails" so you can see the images. If you make the width of the Windows Explorer 'window' about 2/3 the width of the screen, you can open a fresh Windows Explorer 'window' and view a USB stick...

Now you can click (to select) images in the search pane and drag them to the USB stick, drop them and they will be copied.

Although you say there are duplicates, it would probably be worth getting a blank CD and using the "Edit" and "Select All" on the Search window, to be able to copy them over to the CD.

I've not used any software to detect duplicates - I would probably not trust it to and by selecting the files you want to backup onto the USB stick, you can at least be selective about what you consider 'important'.

I've just had a rethink about writing to CD, as the method I suggested might give error messages (because of duplicate names).

Probably better to plug in an external drive (250 GB or 320 GB perhaps - depends on how many PCs you have at home and whether you will want to go higher, say 500 GB) and copy all the folders from the HD to the external drive.

Then you can go about 'pruning' what is left on your PC, knowing that everything has been backed up.

Just took a look for some external drives - as you can see, for the sake of about an extra tenner, you are likely to get 500 GB storage rather than 250 GB :-

38.99 Mistral 250GB Portable Hard Drive
www.ebuyer.com/product/205609

39.90 Freecom 250GB Portable Hard Drive
www.ebuyer.com/product/176797

48.99 Seagate 500GB External Hard Drive
www.ebuyer.com/product/160907

52.95 Toshiba Alu 500GB External Hard Drive
www.ebuyer.com/product/154815

Obviously not an exhaustive list, but gives some ideas if you compare with PC World or Maplin - so you can avoid being ripped off paying too much!

Thank you so much. Am using XP so am doing a 'search' now.

Is the idea of sorting them by date modified that I will end up with duplicated images being sorted so that they end up together? Will this work regardless of when they were downloaded onto my PC? Because the duplicates were downloaded on different dates.

I hadn't heard of an external drive before (not very technical clearly), thanks for the suggestions I will have a look.

Yes once I have safely backed them up I will remove some from my PC as they are cluttering it up.

Thanks again!!

Oh come on girls we all know this is done by nifty apps. I am actually a Mac user so there's no point me eulogising the virtues of TidyUp!, but you could try this for Windows:

www.moleskinsoft.com/

NG's idea of moving everything of first is a good one- you can sort it out off-line and then copy back, having trashed the originals.

"Is the idea of sorting them by date modified that I will end up with duplicated images being sorted so that they end up together? Will this work regardless of when they were downloaded onto my PC? Because the duplicates were downloaded on different dates."

Depending on how your camera software works and if you've modified any of the photos (say to crop them) then duplicate photos might not end up together.

However if you only delete files that you compare and see are duplicates then you're not going to cause any harm.

You could also try sorting by name and that might make spotting, and deleting, duplicates a bit easier.

I think this gives an excellent example of why technical people are sometimes not the people to ask for help, we can give needlessly technical answers rather than the simple ones. I really would have gone off and written my own de-duplicating tool for this...

Thank you!

Ah yes but you technical people have the knowledge that the rest of us crave so am very grateful for the help.

I have found some genius solutions to technical problems on mumsnet that I would never have found in RL.

I was using the date because generally (with Windows) the copies are given the same details.

Filenames as in IMAGE01.JPG etc may easily be duplicated so if photos were taken each month, the photos downloaded from the camera/mobile to the PC, and a new set of photos made, then you could get a fresh set of IMAGE01.JPG etc for each set of photos (and of course they won't be the same).

File size can sometimes be used, however the size of photos is often going to be quite similar, and XP won't (as far as I know) sort the files on two factors (file size, file name) unlike a spreadsheet.

I'd just re-iterate that I don't care how fancy the application is, I would still have concerns about whether it was deleting too many files

PS spotted a 16 GB USB stick for under 19 pounds on scan.co.uk The item is in the "Today Only" section via front page of site.
Image can be seen here :- www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?ProductId=35104

"Filenames as in IMAGE01.JPG etc may easily be duplicated so if photos were taken each month, the photos downloaded from the camera/mobile to the PC, and a new set of photos made, then you could get a fresh set of IMAGE01.JPG etc for each set of photos (and of course they won't be the same)."

Depending on how the camera works each photo might get a unique file name, so it "could" be a very easy way of spotting duplicates, providing the camera works that way.

The cameras that I've used have always worked that way, but that's no guarantee at all that all of them will.

As with any method of spotting duplicate files (name, date or some automated app) the trick is to always check that the photos really are duplicates before deleting them by previewing them.

Clonespy is a free Windows program to find duplicate files.

There are other programs available that can detect near-duplicate images which have been re-sized, tinted, cropped etc but I don't know of any free ones.