Duplicate files

[shanklinmike]

Have owned an iMac for about 10 years with no problems and recently loaded TotalAV anti-virus software. Using this I ran the "find duplicates" programme and discovered I had over 93,000 duplicate files! I have no idea how this has come about. A lot of these duplicates are photo files, can anyone suggest how I can prevent this happening in the future. Thanks.

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum.

You can get rid of the TotalAV software. There are no viruses for Mac, so that software is doing nothing, and can do nothing, except slow down your iMac. What "find duplicates" program did you run? Is it part of TotalAV? I find the total of 93,000 duplicates hard to believe, unless the application is also looking at your backups on an external drive.

So, before we begin, which iMac, what version of the macOS and how is your system set up? It's hard to make any suggestions until we know a bit more about how your system is configured.

 

[shanklinmike]

Hi Jake, thanks for responding. I am running OSX 10.11.6 on a desktop iMac, early 2009 vintage. Usually download photos to Photoshop Bridge. Yes, 93,000 does sound excessive, hence my post. I have external hard drive back up but this was not connected to my Mac when I was running the TotalAV find duplicates programme. Hope this helps.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, as I said, I would get rid of the TotalAV software. To check for the duplicates you can use Finder. In the Search window in the upper right corner of Finder in List view, enter ".jpg" (without the quote marks) and then Finder will find all .jpg files. Now sort by name by clicking on the Name header and duplicates will follow one another in the resulting list. You can then check to see what folders hold the duplicates. (In Finder click View and then Show Path Bar and the path to the files will be in the bottom of the Finder window for you. What you do with the duplicates is up to you. I don't uses Photoshop Bridge, so I can't tell you how to avoid duplicates in the future, but it sounds like your photos are being downloaded from your phone or camera, and then duplicated into Bridge. Again, I don't use it, so that may be incorrect.

 

[ferrarr]

If you are using Time Machine, for your backups, and you leave the drive disconnected, you may have a lot of "local snapshots" saved locally.

 

[shanklinmike]

Thanks again Jake/Bob, I will give your comments a go and hopefully solve my problem. Cheers.

 

[usagora]

Just curious...what prompted you to download anti-virus software after 10 years with your iMac problem free?

 

[pm-r]

recently loaded TotalAV anti-virus software. Using this I ran the "find duplicates" programme and discovered I had over 93,000 duplicate files!

Call me confused, but why would an AV application even have an option to go looking for duplicates??? At least that's the way I read the post.

Does it even allow one to check and look at any of the duplicates to see if they are?? Somehow I doubt it, and I would reinforce the suggestion to get rid of the TotalAV anti-virus software.





- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Call me confused, but why would an AV application even have an option to go looking for duplicates??? At least that's the way I read the post.

Ok, Confused, I suspect that the duplicates finding is about the only thing the AV software can do, so there you go.

Does it even allow one to check and look at any of the duplicates to see if they are?? Somehow I doubt it, and I would reinforce the suggestion to get rid of the TotalAV anti-virus software.





- Patrick
======

And there are actually better alternatives, some free, to get to that same place (like the Finder trick I posted).