Duplicate files in Obscure Folders?

[a_bc_user]

Hi. A lot of times you have duplicate subdirectories with mostly identical files but these are hidden under layers of higher level directories; commonly happens with erroneous drag and drop copies in Explorer etc, and since you don't know where these folders are you cannot set a second base folder. Is there a file-then-folder-driven (as opposed to folder-then-file driven) comparison approach? For example, let's say I have many identical files tucked away in different directories of a drive, and it would be nice if you can set BC to find all those in a drive and show you where these identical files appear in the different folders side by side with Folder Compare (i.e., for a particular file it finds, it sets its own Base folders). That is very logical in the way the brain works for managing duplicate files. I'm not very familiar with comparison tools but the only other one I tried was terrible at that and thus quite useless. Can anyone highlight what BC can do when it comes to finding and duplicate files and matching their respective folders?
Thanks.

[Aaron]

Hello,

You can set BC3 to Ignore Folder Structure, which will then align files based on file name alone, and then determine if they are equal or not.

Alternatively, you can use other products to search specifically for duplicates. Here is one that I found with google (not supported by Scooter Software):
http://lifehacker.com/5293767/fast-d...our-file-dupes

There may be additional suggestions in the comments of that thread.

[a_bc_user]

Hello,

You can set BC3 to Ignore Folder Structure, which will then align files based on file name alone, and then determine if they are equal or not.

Alternatively, you can use other products to search specifically for duplicates. Here is one that I found with google (not supported by Scooter Software):
http://lifehacker.com/5293767/fast-d...our-file-dupes

There may be additional suggestions in the comments of that thread.

Hey thanks Aaron! Will give it a shot in a moment.

[jpc12223]

Duplicate file locator

There is another product which may help you. It comes in a free version and with a more advanced premium version. It is "Heatsoft Clone Cleaner." It is very intuitive but also amazingly fast. Give it a try. I think you'll like it.