Thousands Of Duplicate Song Files To Sort Through, File organization and backup Options

[soundsmitten]

Well it's spring cleaning time,,, and over the years I have acumulated over 3000 .rns song files (Reason song files) found scattered all over my 400GB worth of harddrives!!!

If I do a regular Finder Search in OS X for all my .rns files, it will show me all 3000+ files and I'd say that over 1/3 of these files are duplicates! Alot of em are the same files that have been renamed over time, or have the same name but different dates, versions ect, ect... WHAT A MESS!!! I dont want to go through all of them manually.
even using Aladin's Spring Cleaning-Duplicates Finder is nothing but a long drawn out pain in the ass... what a waste of time and money already!

Doing all this work manually would take me months and I really really could use some help here as I would much rather be making music,,, not f**ing around well into next fall trying to manually sort through all this mess.

Anyone know of any OS X software that will scan my harddrives for specific file types (ie: .rns), automatically delete all duplicate files (leaving only 1 version of each file left on my hard drives), then allow me to take all those files,, lift em all up off my various drives and place them neatly into one handy folder that I can then sort through as my new "Reason Song Library Folder"???

Basically, I just wanna scan my entire system for all .rns files and simply have them backed up in one tidy folder EXCLUDING all the duplicates, then once I have organize those files, I can use Silverkeeper to then have that "Reason Song Library Folder" syncronized to a backup drive and all will be chill again in the land of soundsmitten... [B]

[td3k]

Try doing just a regular search using "*.rns" and just start dragging them all into one big folder or hierarchy of folders, then back 'em up. Then worry about sorting them. Better to have one big mess backed up, than to loose everything in a disaster, or accidentally trash something you might want later.

Here's another suggestion, after you have your stuff backed up. In the future, when you start a file, suffix the name with a number series, like 001, 002, 010, 100, ect. Incement the number with each major change, that will always distinguish which version of a song you are working with, and the 3 digits allows 999 versions per file (which you will never use.) I work on projects with two other people, on the same session files and we are all able to keep our files in sync like this. It's not automatic or anything, just a way of working in a more organized way.

Hope that helps,
TD

[soundsmitten]

Thanks for your reply...

However i have already tried doing this,,, if I do a search, the results include all duplicate files,, some files have the same name, others are the same file but has a different name than it's original... in osx if I grab all the files from my search (including duplicates) and try to pull them into one folder,,, it will give me an error message stating "one or more files could not be copied cause "X-named" file is busy" when I check on the file it stated, sure enough there are a few various duplicates of that file,, and some are named the same but have different "date modified" date's. After I get this "error" message, OSX for some reason refuses to copy any of the files into the specified folde at all,,, again I do not want to have to go through each file one by one,, I'd die of old age first...

I do usually incrementally save my song files, they are mostly numberated by version "File 01" "file 02" ect,,, however over the span of the last few years I have been backing up my files from one drive to another and mistakenly been updating the "syncornized files" on my various drives,, causing many files to have the same name but still be seperta versions...with different "Date Modified"times,,, Man o Man it's such a mess.

bassically if there was a drag and drop utility that would allow me to grab all my various RNS files and pull them into one folder excluding duplicates, that would be awesome!! you know,,, like for instance, if I am dragging and dropping pictures off the net into a folder on my desktop and two files are named "photo.jpg" the latter file will be nautomatically renamed "photo.jpg01" but if i right click and ask it to save the same photo into a folder with the same name it will ask me if I wish to rewrite over the existing photo.. you know??? so to avoid that I have been draggin and dropping my pics into a folder. Now if i could somehow do the same thing but using OSX's finder and dragging my song files into one folder that would at least be a start... it would then automatically remane any files that are named the same by adding a number to the end of the file name.

So confusing to see this mess, I am usially a pretty good little neat freak,, but I let things get outa hand since adding so many drives to my system... I almost want to just delete everything and start from scratch, this is such a headache.

please someone help me!!!

[soundsmitten]

In a nut shell, basically what I am searching for is an OSX app or apps that can help me do the following:

-scan for all specified files in any designated area (in this case .rns on 5 of my 6 drives)

-remove every double manually, keeping only one version of each file on my drives.

-allow me to gather all the remaining files into one folder and automatically rename (in num sequence) any modified files that share the same name
(so, if I have two files named "amazingsong01.rns" but one has been modified at a later date than the other and I attempt to drag both songs into one folder... the app will allow both files in the folder by automaticaly renaming the newer file "amazingsong01_01.rns" follow me?

- Oh, and i want it to do my bloody dishes while its at it!

[soundsmitten]

My prayers have been answered!!!



I have finished off everything that I was wishing to accomplish in less than one day with File Buddy's Demo!!!!
..as oppossed to taking weeks with Spring Cleaning or any of those other crappy apps. I, with a little direction and focus, was able to merge and purge all my Reason songs into one nice tidey neat folder and back a syncronized copy of it to my "safety drive" Whew

HIGLY RECOMMENDED if anyone else here is facing the same sorta task on a Mac! Awesome stuff!