A new feature of Duplicate File Detective v3.0 that's receiving a lot of praise is its ability to replace duplicate files with shell shortcuts.

This is a very powerful concept, allowing for removal of duplicate files while still allowing end users to access to the original copy through the previous file location. This feature is implemented in Duplicate File Detective as part of the Duplicate Result Manager dialog window:

As you can see in the screen shot above, there is an option to replace moved or deleted duplicates with shell shortcuts to their unmarked siblings. The option becomes available anytime you execute an operation that results in the movement or deletion of duplicate files.

So how exactly does duplicate file shortcut linking work? The key is to remember that Duplicate File Detective organizes duplicate files into groups. In the screen shot below, you can see that each duplicate file group has an alternating background color, as well as unique group number (as shown below the Group column header). Also note that, in the example below, we've marked all but the first duplicate file in each group.

When replacing duplicate files with shell shortcuts, the first unmarked duplicate in each group becomes the link target for all other files in the same group. In other words, in the example screen above, the first (unmarked) "tulips.jpg" file would become the shell shortcut target for all the remaining (marked) "tulip.jpg" files. If there are multiple unmarked duplicates in a group, then the first of these will be used as the shell shortcut target.

Once the Duplicate Result Manager completes file processing with the shell shortcut option engaged, the marked duplicate files of each group will be replaced by shell shortcuts to the first unmarked duplicate in the same group.

Nearly every day, we receive emails from users who are just beginning to understand the full capabilities of the FolderSizes integrated search tool.

Because of the deep flexibility of the available criteria, FolderSizes Search can be used for all sorts of purposes - finding files owned by a certain user, creating printable file and folder listings, finding files not modified within the last 365 days... the examples go on and on.

But in this blog post we're going to focus on one specific example - finding empty folders with FolderSizes.

The first thing you should do is make sure you're using FolderSizes v4.8.2.92 or later, which exposes a couple of specific search attributes that will be useful to us (more on this in a minute). Go ahead and download the latest version, if you haven't already. We'll wait.  :-)

Now, once FolderSizes is installed and running, click the Search button in the main window toolbar. This will cause the FolderSizes Search window to appear.

Notice that FolderSizes Search exposes a broad range of search criteria, including search paths, name, date, size, (path) length, attributes and owner. For finding empty folders, we're specifically concerned about the size and attributes search criteria. First, since we want to find folders that have a size of zero, set the size search criteria to "equal to" "0". Here's a screen shot:

Next, we want FolderSizes Search to show only folders. Again, we're looking for empty folders here, not empty files (though, of course, FolderSizes can show those too if you want). Do this by clearing all the check boxes in the attributes criteria except the directory attribute. Again, a screen shot:

Finally, specify what paths you want FolderSizes to search. You can add as many local or network (mapped drive or UNC) paths as you like, and FolderSizes will search them all. By default, your root system drive (usually your C:\ drive) will appear in the search paths listing, but of course you can add, remove, and arrange them as needed.

Now - click the Start button in the Search window toolbar, you're off and running. Soon, you'll have a listing of all empty folders in the search paths you specified.

Notice that in the screen shot above, I've adjusted the visible search result columns. Specifically, I've removed the size columns (we know they're zero size, after all, because we specified as much in the search criteria). I've also enabled the "files" and "folders" columns, which show precisely how many files and folders are in each of our empty folders.

Huh? Did I just say that our empty folders might have files and subfolders in them? Yes! After all, we've told FolderSizes to locate folders with an aggregate size of zero - as long as any files or subfolders are also zero-length, then they don't contribute positively to their parent folder's overall size. So is a folder that contains empty files or folders truly empty, then? Well, that's entirely up to you to decide - FolderSizes gives you all the information you need to make such decisions (you can even sort by the files / folders columns as needed).

The modern home or professional computing user’s appetitive for disk space just keeps on growing, primarily because of our ever-evolving ability to digitize critical elements of our personal and business lives.

At home, people are amassing large volumes of documents, images, music files, and videos. In particular, modern digital photo and video cameras produce very large, high-resolution content files that consume considerable amounts of disk space. And how often have you downloaded and saved a file (be it an application, image, video, or whatnot) a second (or even third) time simply because you couldn’t quickly find the original that you knew existed somewhere on your hard drive?

In the business arena, we’re working to digitize our document libraries to improve efficiency and reduce use of paper products, often creating duplication along the way. We’re maintaining large image and video repositories for archival and analysis purposes. And, we’re keeping these items in storage areas (often accessed through a local area network), portions of which are often allocated to users who download (or exchange via email) and store the same files repeatedly.

In both the home and the office, the use of inexpensive external file storage mechanisms is also increasing. It’s not uncommon to see people carrying around one or more USB keys and copying files onto various desktop and notebook computers for immediate use. Many home and business computing users also utilize one more larger external (eSATA, USB, or FireWire) storage volumes. All of these storage devices can quickly become cluttered with multiple copies of identical files.

And duplicate file storage has serious consequences. Not only is disk space used unnecessarily, duplicate files can also deteriorate the performance of backup processes and – in the case of the frequently-used online backup storage option – increase their expense considerably. The presence of duplicate files can also impede business collaboration when users discover multiple copies of seemingly identical documents, as well as impacting file system searches and archival processes.

Duplicate File Detective 3 is a software product designed to help users find and remove duplicate files. It can operate against local drives, network attached storage volumes, removable devices and more – and it search them all at the same time. What’s more, it contains powerful tools to help remove or archive duplicate files quickly, and safely.

With Duplicate File Detective 3, you can:

1. Reclaim wasted local and network storage resources quickly and efficiently
2. Speed up backup processes by reducing storage allocation redundancy
3. Gain visibility into what types of duplicates are consuming space and who owns them
4. Process (move, delete, or zip) duplicates safely with our built-in file management system
5. Scan and de-dupe file systems of virtually any size with our extreme scalability engine
6. Find duplicates by any combination of attributes, including content-only matching (regardless of file names) 

You can download Duplicate File Detective 3 and begin using the free, fully-functional trial version immediately.

Our FolderSizes (disk space analysis and reporting) and Duplicate File Detective (duplicate file management) software products are used by many thousands of people all over the world, many of them members of Fortune 500 entities that depend upon them for daily storage management capabilities.

For this reason (and because we're just generally geeky), we have a wide range of hardware in our development and test labs. This includes pretty much every type of removal storage device you can imagine, Internet connected storage mechanisms, large SANs (storage area networks) packed with millions of files (usually for stress and scalability testing purposes), and more. You can't take two steps in any direction around here with tripping over an eSATA or USB drive, and yes - there have been a few minor injuries as a result. But hey - it's all in the name of science! Errrr, software.

Testing all these gadgets (and optimizing our software as a result) is important, though not generally all that exciting. However, one particular class of devices - SSDs (solid state drives) - have really captured our attention as of late. In fact, I have a 128 GB Crucial SSD installed in the laptop that I'm using to write this blog entry. And you know what? They'll be prying it from my cold, dead hands.

The impact that SSDs have on general computing performance is simply startling, especially when coupled with Microsoft Windows 7. I mean, there is just nothing more soul-sucking than sitting around waiting for some clunky 5400 RPM mechanical hard drive to load Visual Studio 2008 - or any other equally large application, for that matter. With SSDs, even the chunkiest of applications launch almost instantly. And because most laptops often have a bit less RAM than their desktop counterparts, they often make heavier use of disk-based paging. This means that installing a solid state drive has a very broad and compelling affect on the performance of the entire machine - no matter what you're doing.

The other thing I love is that I no longer need to be constantly worried about moving my laptop around. The simple fact of the matter is that normal hard drives really shouldn't be moved at all while they're spinning, and they're one of the most common points of failure in notebook computers. My current Toshiba laptop even came installed with a little taskbar applet that alerted me to such movement, and it nagged me constantly. Frankly, this is just one bit of stress I don't need.

Thankfully, SSDs mean no moving parts, and they have amazing shock and vibration tolerance. No more "mobile computing anxiety" for me. And my laptop is even a tad lighter with it.

Oh, and the SSD is absolutely dead silent. This is one of those things that I never really thought I'd care about until I experienced it for myself - the silence is just... beautiful.

Bottom line - if you value performance, reliability, and peace of mind, SSDs are the real deal. Yes, they're more expensive than the old mechanical drives, but I can tell you from personal experience - they're worth it!

Some software tools, including our FolderSizes disk space analysis utility, are capable of reporting two size metrics for each file system object it encounters - "size" and "allocated size" (the latter is sometimes also called "size on disk"). In this blog entry, I will discuss what they metrics represent, and how they differ.

First, you'll find need to know that disk space is allocated to files in units called clusters. The size of a cluster can vary depending upon a number of actors, including what file system is used (NTFS, FAT32, etc.) and partition size. Most people today running the Microsoft Windows operating system are using NTFS, which has a default cluster size of 4K (4096 bytes).

Since all files are stored within one or more clusters, their "size on disk" (allocated size) is always a multiple of the file system's cluster size. For example, if you are using NTFS with a 4K cluster size, any file containing between 1 and 4096 bytes of data will consume a single cluster. Any file containing between 4097 and 8192 bytes will use two clusters. And so on.

As a result, any file that has a size which is not an exact multiple of the file system's cluster size (and the vast majority aren't) will "waste" a portion of its last cluster. Therefore, a file's "allocated" size will usually be larger than its actual size. This wasted space is usually referred to as "cluster overhang" or "disk slack". Some tools such as our FolderSizes disk space analysis software can also report upon cluster overhang for folders (directories).

A rough estimate of wasted space for a volume can be calculated by multiplying the number of files it contains by half the cluster size. So, for example, if an NTFS file system with 4K clusters contains 50,000 files, the estimated wasted space would be about 97MB of disk space.

Other factors, such as file system compression can also affect the computation of allocated space.

The latest version of Duplicate File Detective - version 3.0 - is now available.

This release of Duplicate File Detective contains some powerful new features and improvements including:

1. Full unicode support
2. Support for Windows 7
3. An entirely new user interface experience
4. The ability to move or delete duplicates while creating shell shortcuts in their place
5. A completely overhauled file checksum calculation tool
6. Greatly improved scalability and efficiency
7. Duplicate file search result pruning capabilities
8. Greater flexibility in duplicate search result filtering
9. Duplicate file search logging
10. And much, much more

With the release of Duplicate File Detective 3.0, we've taken your ability to find and remove duplicate files to the next level.

Please download the free trial today.