Duplicate Files

Hi

There was a mystery going on today when I thought I had "lost" three folders containing hundreds of files ("game notes" going back over 20 years) from my Win7 machine.

All my searches for them came up blank

But as I had copies of the folders stored on an external drive, I just transferred them from it back onto my machine.

Well .... The original data mustn't have actually been lost because now when I open the "new" folders I copied back onto my Win7 machine, all three of them contain duplicates of every file !! Agggghhhhhh !!

Does anyone know of a way I can get rid of all these duplicates - apart from spending hours deleting them one by one ??

Any help will be MUCH appreciated !!

Thanks.

Mad

Would a system restore to an earlier time help ?

Firstly, search will only produce results for files that have been indexed. You have to tell it which folders you want to be included in the index. Secondly, when you lose or accidentally delete files your first move should be to check your shadow copies. This ability is built into win 7 ultimate. If you aren't using that you can use a third party program (whose name has slipped my mind) to do the same job. Just Google for shadow copy.
Actually it's apparently available in all versions of Windows 7. It was Vista were it was only available in some versions

I'm not clear on how that will help Mad remove duplicate files.
Could you go into more detail?

Gil.

As long as you've got ALL of the files backed up on your external drive, just delete the entire contents of the duplicate folders from your hard drive and copy what you need back from the external drive. You can use Control-A to select everything in the folder.

If you have any newer files that aren't on the external drive, back those up first. You may be able to use "Sort by Date" to find the newer files.

I've found Windows Search to be almost useless.
A command Window with
CD \
DIR name-of-file-or-folder /S
works much better.

Just make sure to use an "Administrative" Command Window to search if you're using Vista, 7, or 8 because otherwise Windows may "protect" itself from being searched. Here's how to open an Administrative Command Window.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc947813%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Hi - And thank you all very much for your responses

I'm pleased to say I have now got myself sorted !!

The obvious solution was to just delete what I'd copied from the external drive to my Win7 machine and copy it again.
But I shot myself in the foot for that. Because after I'd copied the notes that first time, I just "dropped" into the newly copied folder the bits I'd only recently downloaded to Desktop - and then put that updated folder back on to my external drive.
And so of course, when I checked the external drive right afterwards, all the duplicated files were on there as well

Panic !!!!

Anyway, I suddenly remembered I still had a mostly up to date version of these notes on my WinXP machine - which is networked to my Win7 machine - so I went across to that and copied them back over to the Win7 one.
And today I've added the latest bits that weren't on the XP machine.
So I'm up and runnin' again.

Voila !!!!

Needless to say I have now copied the corrected info safely back onto the external drive

Thanks again.

Mad

Nicely done, Mad! Persistence pays off... well, that and multiple PCs with copies of the things you need!

"well, that and multiple PCs with copies of the things you need!"

Oh, I'm a great believer in those, Draclvr !!

Me, too, Mad!

It wasn't meant to. It was more for future reference for when you lose/delete files by accident. There's
a chance they are still there in the shadow backup.