DupeGuru

[Rex A. Butcher]

What ho one and all,

Following a thread on a different forum relating to lack of HDD space, one recommendation was to run DupeGuru. So downloaded, installed and have run it on my XP Pro, C:/ partition (the OS)

It has highlighted 9000 dupe files occupying a space of over 3gb. Many of these dupes are in the same folder, only differentiated by a time difference of one second.

Although I have taken a Sys Restore point before running the program, and have an image of the OS as a back-up, it concerns me as to what could happen to the OS.. Why are there so many dupe files, particularly in the same folder? Is it safe to delete them?

Thanks and toodle pip

Rex

[Steve R Jones]

Without knowing anything about the files or folders - it's hard for us to comment.

I wouldn't trust any program to decide for me... Removing one wrong file could turn your pc into a boat anchor.

[fink]

As Steve says you would probably wreck your computer.

Every single modern computer on the planet has thousands of duplicate files. Most of them are necessary for various programs including the operating system to run. They are in different folders so each individual program can find and use them. If you allow a program to delete them you are begging for trouble.

Let us know what those specific dupes are and we can tell you whether it's safe or not. Unless they are in a temp directory odds are they have or at least had some use.

The only thing a duplicate file finding program should ever be used for is to search a storage drive/folder for duplicate media or document files. In particular jpegs or mp3's because when deleted they will not be missed.

There are plenty of other safe ways to create space on a full drive.