This example will walk you through the basics of using zsDuplicateHunter to find and remove duplicate files from your computer. the majority of this example uses the main screen of zsDuplicateHunter which is designed to walk you through the duplicate hunt process step by step.
This example will use only the features found in zsDuplicateHunter Standard edition except where otherwise noted. If you are using the Professional or Enterprise Edition of zsDuplicateHunter, you will have access to additional functionality which is not found in the Standard Edition.
If you would like to follow along with this example, you can use the sample data provided by Zizasoft. If you received zsDuplicateHunter on CD, the sample data is in the Pictures folder within the zsDuplicateHunter Sample Files folder on the CD. If you downloaded zsDuplicateHunter, you can get the sample files from http://www.zizasoft.com/products/zsDuplicateHunter/samples.html . Make sure to copy the files to your local hard drive and that they can be deleted.
Step 1. Select the folders to search In the first step, you select the files that you want zsDuplicateHunter to check for duplicates.
For the purposes of this example select the Pictures folder within the samples directory. This folder is a small sample of photos from a digital camera. Some of the files have been categorized according to the contents of the picture. These categorized files are in the Animals folder. There are also raw files which were downloaded from the camera. These files have the default name from the camera and are broken up by roll in the Library folder.
You can select the folder either by pressing the Add Folder to Search button or by dragging the folder from your system explorer to the list of files to search.
Step 2. Select duplicate hunt options. In this step, you tell zsDuplicateHunter what criteria you want to use to group duplicate files. This is a necessary step because different situations call for different criteria to be used.
ZsDuplicateHunter defines several sets of options which you can use, or you can define your own sets of options. For this duplicate hunt, we will use the default options Exact Duplicates Using Checksum . This set of options will group any files which have the same contents as duplicates.
Your screen should now be similar to the following.
Step 3. Start Duplicate Hunt Press the Start Duplicate Hunt button. This will cause zsDuplicateHunter to begin grouping files to identify duplicates. You can watch the progress at the bottom of the screen.
Step 4. Review Results Now that the duplicate hunt is complete, we can review the results. ZsDuplicateHunter offers two methods of viewing the duplicates, by path and by group. Let's start by looking at the results using the View Results By Group display. If the View Results By Group button is not selected, press the View Results By Group button. You can also set the view mode from the View menu.
The View By Group view displays all duplicate files together with information about the files. As you can see, there are 4 groups of files which zsDuplicateHunter has identified as duplicates.
Let's look at the information zsDuplicateHunter displays about each group. The grouping information will change based on the options that are selected for the duplicate hunt. For this hunt, zsDuplicateHunter first displays the number of files within the group. All of the files within the group are duplicates (according to the criteria you set). After the number of files, zsDuplicateHunter shows the value of the size and checksum that all of the files in the group share.
Now, let's look at the files within the first group. The first group contains four files. Open the group by double-clicking on the group. When you open the file, all of the files which are copies of each other are shown. The full paths of the files are shown in the first column, and the date that the file was last modified is shown in the second column. You may need to scroll the results to the right to see the last modified column. Let's look at each of the files. As you can see, the files do not all share the same name, and the files also are not all in the same directory. By reviewing the files, it appears that the same picture was downloaded off of the camera into both the Roll 1 and Roll 2 folders. This happens frequently when downloading files. It also appears that when the pictures were categorized, that they were categorized under two separate names "e;Bear "e;and "e;Grizzly"e;. Depending on your categorization system, you may wish to preserve both of these files. The remaining three groups all show a categorized picture as well as the original file in the Roll 1 folder.
Now, let's look at the same duplicate hunt using the View by Path display mode. Select the View Results By Path button to switch from viewing by group to viewing by path.After you switch to path mode, you will see the path which we searched for duplicates in. Open this folder and you will see the Animals and Library folders. After the folder name, zsDuplicateHunter displays a summary of the files and folders contained in, that folder. For example, the Animals folder contains eight files. Of the eight files, five of them have duplicates someplace else in the results, and three of the files are unique. The Library folder has no files directly within it, but it has two folders under it. Both folders have 1 or more files in them which contain duplicates. If you open the Library folder, you can view information about each of the folders within the Library folder.
Open the Animals folder and you will see the files which are in the folder. Because we did not elect to include unique files in the results, only files which have at least one duplicate are shown. The program also displays how many duplicates of each file exist. For example, the file Bear.JPG has 3 duplicate files. If you expand the file, zsDuplicateHunter will list the files which are duplicates of Bear.JPG these are the same files that were listed when we displayed the results by group.
Step 5: Remove Duplicate Files To remove the duplicates, let's first switch back to viewing the results By Group by clicking on the View Results By Group button. In the first group, we just want to remove the original files and leave the files which have been categorized. To do this, we will delete files individually. Open the first group and select the last two files which are named DSCN1330.JPG. Now, make sure that the selected deletion method is set to Delete Selected Files . You can now press the Start Deletion button. ZsDuplicateHunter will display a warning that the files will be deleted permanently. You can also setup the program to delete files to a folder which we will do next. Select OK to have zsDuplicateHunter delete the files. After the files are deleted, the results will be updated to show that the files have been deleted. If one or more of the files cannot be deleted for any reason, zsDuplicateHunter will display a list of the files. If you do receive a message that the sample files could not be deleted, make sure that the files are not on read-only media like a CD.
Next, let's look at how to delete files to a folder. First, open the options dialog by pressing the Edit Options button. Now that the Options dialog is open, select the File Deletion tab. To delete files told a folder rather than deleting them permanently, select the Delete to Folder option. With this option selected, zsDuplicateHunter will move any files which are selected for deletion to the folder. By default, ZsDuplicateHunter will create a trash folder in your user directory. If the deletion folder does not exist, it will be shown in red. ZsDuplicateHunter will automatically create the folder the first time a file is deleted to the folder.
Now, let's delete any files in the library folder which have already been categorized. To do this we will switch back to viewing files by path by selecting the View Results By Path button. The easiest way to do this depends on which edition of the program you are using. If you are using the Professional or Enterprise editions, you can select the Animals folder and use the Keep Files In This Folder, Delete Duplicates Elsewhere deletion method. This allows you to remove all of the duplicates in one easy step. If you are using the Standard Edition,you would either need to delete the files individually as we did in the first deletion, or if you only wanted to preserve one copy of the file, you could use the Delete All Duplicates of File deletion method.
At any time while deleting files and reviewing the results, you can open files in their default viewer by first selecting the file or files you wish to view and then selecting Open in Viewer from the Results menu, or clicking the Open in Viewer button on the toolbar above the results.
For more information about the other commands which are available within zsDuplicateHunter, please see the User Interface section of the User's Guide.
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