[queen8855]

I am running Vista and have a application/program called "Photo Gallery". It has all the pictures on my computer. However -- I have a problem with a single picture being duplicated 2 to 5 times. I have no idea why. I may have chosen to have the same picture in two different folder - but certainly not more the "2". Any suggestions will be gratefully read. Thank you in advance!

[ChuckE]

It really isn't too hard to get duplicates. If you have more than one drive, any drag from one location to another location on the other drive will default to a Copy. (There are mouse actions to avoid that - just ask and you can be shown how.)

How can you be sure that the files are duplicates, and not just some links, or whatever?
Tell us the complete path names to a few of the pictures you have that appear to be duplicated. The complete path name which includes the filename as well.

Also, what you may think to be a copy might just be a link to the very same file, which (at first) appears to be a duplicate, but if you know how to tell the difference, it isn't. Opening the link will open the real file it is linked to. So it might appear to be a duplicate. Links, by the way, take a VERY SMALL amount of diskspace, like a couple hundred bytes - nothing to worry about.

Another way of getting duplicates is to run any of quite a few different graphics programs MAY duplicate the pictures into folders for itself.

With todays massive, multi-Gigabyte hard drives, a few duplicates of even a few thousand pictures is really not all that space eating. They are just a drop in the bucket.
(Assuming one picture is about 5MB, a thousand duplications would be 5GB.)

If I would spend the time I could probably thin down my picture duplicates quite a few Gigabytes, but it really isn't worth my time. Perhaps ... some rainy day, I'll spend the effort. But having with having 300 .. 500 .. 750GB .. 1000GB (a TeraByte) drives, and trying to get back a "measly" 10GB, heck, even 30GB, is not too important.
(Crazy, isn't it? My first hard drive was a "massive" 10MB! Now, just even one picture can be that big, or bigger. I laugh at trying to save a 10 MegaBytes here or there. )

[Hughv]

Right-click any image and select "Open File Location" to see if they are really duplicates.

[ALECK]

You will lose a lot of pictures when your tetrabyte drive fails. Don't put all your eggs in one basket!
If anyone is interested I have my 4 x 160MB drives set up in a raid 10 configuration which means that if any one drive fails I can replace it and the information is rebuilt on it from the other three. Another tip, an excellent prog called Folder Match can deal with all of your duplications and synchronise your backups intellegently. I did have over 10 thousand pictures on my C drive and usb portable drive. total 600GB. Running Folder Match under my control saved 300GB of drive space! This makes finding what I want much faster.

[Hughv]

What are you doing for backup?
It sounds as though you didn't save any space, you just quit making backup copies, 'though I could be confused by your numbers.

Originally Posted by ALECK

You will lose a lot of pictures when your tetrabyte drive fails. Don't put all your eggs in one basket!
If anyone is interested I have my 4 x 160MB drives set up in a raid 10 configuration which means that if any one drive fails I can replace it and the information is rebuilt on it from the other three. Another tip, an excellent prog called Folder Match can deal with all of your duplications and synchronise your backups intellegently. I did have over 10 thousand pictures on my C drive and usb portable drive. total 600GB. Running Folder Match under my control saved 300GB of drive space! This makes finding what I want much faster.

[ALECK]

Sorry if I confused you. I have been making backups to DVD's but this got out of hand! I will now buy a second usb portable drive about 500GB and backup to that then disconnect until next B U I was verry suprised to see the number of duplicates the prog revealed, some as many as 5 of one file! Have been keeping the RAW originals as well as the DNG conversions. I guess I'm just an untidy person my File storage is as bad as my workroom!

[Hughv]

Keep making your DVD backups. No data is safe on a hard drive, regardless of which RAID level is used.

[ALECK]

Thanks for your wisdom, will do
Al