Google Drive comes with a bunch of handy features, including user friendly interface, easy collaboration features etc. Unless you’re extremely cautious about junk files and their effects, there are mighty chances that your Google Drive is filled with tons of GBs of duplicate files.
How do you get dupes?
Google’s cloud storage technology is surely not responsible for duplicates on it’s own. The problem usually arises when users casually perform their routine computing tasks without caring about the consequences. This includes saving an unedited document in two different locations on the PC, creating multiple backups etc. Similarly, transferring images / videos / songs from USB sticks, DVDs/ CDs to the hard drive is as simple as plug and play, nowadays. This makes matters really simple on one end, but on the flip side if you mistakenly copy data to multiple locations on the hard drive, that would simply be a needless burden on your computer. These are just a handful of the scenarios that start the trouble..
Problems caused by dupes
Duplicate (or multiple) copies of the same file(s) not only eat up precious space from your Google Drive allocation, but also make it difficult to manage and organize Google Drive’s contents. After all, how can you be sure which Google Doc you were working last day when you see too many identical copies?
Dupes can consume a significant amount of the network bandwidth and ultimately hit you hard in terms of the costs incurred on consuming extra bandwidth. They also continue to eat up valuable storage space from your 15 GB Google Drive allocation.
People who regularly use a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Corel DRAW or some other software usually compress the images before sharing them through the cloud due to the high volume of images involved on a frequent basis. This helps them minimise their allocation of Google Drive. This isn’t as good an idea as it appears to be. Compressing and then extracting the image (or set of images) takes longer and it becomes particularly painful when the compressed images are bulk in numbers. Also, the process of compression usually has an adverse effect on the image quality. And last, but certainly not the least, is the fact that you certainly can’t download many sets of compressed folders with each one of them containing a whole lot of images while you just wanted to dig out a few images! Imagine how frustrating and time consuming that process would be!
The solution
Sorcim’s Clone Files Checker is designed with several powerful scan algorithms coupled with a very user friendly user interface that makes it one of the most popular duplicate sweeping softwares out there.
CFC can scan multiple drives and folders, all at the command of a few clicks. For most users it turns out to be a massive relief, helping them reclaiming several GBs of their hard drive. Clone Files Checker also provides with the option to scan for only select file types or for a universal scan, it all depends on your requirements.
The “Quick-Fix” option comes in particularly handy when the search brings up a whole lot of duplicates. This option then lets you specify a universal course of action for all the results before executing it in go across the board for all dupes. You can use “Review & Fix” if you wish to take a look at the duplicates unearthed. You can easily filter the search results into groups according to their file types and then decide the appropriate action to be taken.
Some other features include the ability to decide whether to remove all the dupes to the Recycle Bin or to a custom folder, filtering out results above / below a specified file size and most importantly, creating a backup before executing the actual delete operation.
