[ 084 ]
Make your hard drive
more manageable
DISCOVER HOW TO BRING ORDER BACK
TO YOUR CHAOTIC HARD DRIVE.Your PC is hopefully now noticeably nippier,
but there’s still room for improvement. But
before we tackle a deep spring clean, let’s look
at hard drive management. Unless you’re very
organised, it’s likely your filing system is a little
haphazard. And if you have multiple hard
drives it’s likely you have multiple copies of
the same files too.
First, see opposite for some advice on what to
look for when finding and removing duplicates.
This could save you from deleting the wrong file
or files when you come to clean up.FIND DUPLICATES QUICKLY
CCleaner includes a file duplicate finder tool,
but it’s not very sophisticated. So download
and install the free version of Duplicate
Cleaner (www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/
duplicatecleaner.html) instead.
First, choose what to search for: the default
options search files by content. You can also
set filters — such as documents, pictures or
music — for files to include or exclude, and
limit your search to files of a certain size and
date. For a system-wide sweep, use the defaults
and switch to the Scan Location tab.
Next, elect where to search using the tools
provided. If you want to exclude a specific
location, add it in the usual way, then right-
click it and choose ‘Exclude Selected Path(s)’.When you’re ready, click the Scan Now button
and wait while Duplicate Cleaner does its work
— it’s not a quick process, so be prepared to
leave your PC on for several hours. If
necessary, minimise the scan window while
you work on other tasks.
Once complete, you can review the results
on the Duplicate Files tab, where they’ll be
listed in no particular order. Focus on the
largest files by clicking the Size column header
twice. Go through the list, ticking the
duplicates you wish to remove or use the
Selection Assistant.
If you have a single folder or location where
your original files sit, you can specify that with
the ‘Select by Location’ button, which tells
Duplicate Cleaner to target files in other
folders for deletion. Once done, you can select
all other files by clicking the magic wand
button and choosing ‘Mark > Select by group >
All but one file in each group’.
While using these and other Duplicate
Finder tools may be tempting, they may not be
accurate enough. Often it’s easier, quicker and
safer to go through the list by hand, weeding
out unwanted files and clicking ‘File Removal’.
From here you can choose whether to delete
a file or send it to the Recycle Bin.
The program can be quite slow and even
non-responsive at times. The trick is to bepatient. If there’s a long list of files to clean, you
may want to take a break. Close the program
— when you next launch the app, your results
will be ready for you to continue processing.MANAGE YOUR PHOTOS
When it comes to managing photos, we need
a tool that can search for similar looking
images as well as identical matches. You’ll have
to upgrade to the Pro version of Duplicate
Cleaner for that, so our favourite alternative
is AntiDupl (antidupl.sourceforge.net/
english/index.html). The walkthrough
opposite explains the steps you need to follow,
but as always it plays to move slowly through
each photo in the list, to be sure you’ve got
the right match.
By default, AntiDupl assumes the first folder
you added to it is the ‘master’ folder — the one
where the files are left untouched. When the
search results appear you’ll see a preview of
each photo on the left complete with basic
information confirming the match. Next to
each photo you’ll see three buttons: taking
the first photo, the top-most button will delete
both copies, while the second icon will
overwrite the second copy with the first.
The next button removes the top photo.
Below the two arrow buttons you’ll see three
similar buttons, with the first one highlighted
in red, indicating that the second photo is set
to be deleted by default. Below is a button
allowing the second copy to overwrite the top
one, and the final button — the hand signal —
allows you to mark this match as a ‘mistake’,
ensuring it’ll be ignored.
Click a button and the desired action is
performed now and the next item is selected,
ready for you to act on. You’ll see similar
buttons appear under the menu bar – if you
select multiple entries using Ctrl-click, you can
click these buttons to perform the action on all
the matches. There’s also a ‘Process selected
results automatically’ button which applies it
to all the results — this is not something we
recommend unless you’re working on a small
set of results.
As you go down the list you’ll come to
photos that aren’t exact matches, giving you
the chance to remove similar items. Deleted
photos are sent to the Recycle Bin for safety,
but once you’re done, be sure to empty it to
free up drive space.The scanning process can
take some time — hours in
fact. Patience is a virtue.You can configure Duplicate
Cleaner to refine its search
for specific content only.FEATUREDEEP CLEAN YOUR WINDOWS PC