duplicate

Tidy Up is tool that can help you reduce hard-drive clutter by identifying duplicate files on any mounted disk. This utility's multipane interface has a bit of a learning curve, despite its new "Basic Mode," and the app's comprehensive search criteria and system of smart and manual "baskets" may not be immediately intuitive to casual users.

Anyone who spends time getting familiar with Tidy Up and its three- step approach, however, will find that it's a powerful tool for identifying and dealing with duplicate files, whether you want to delete them, move them, … Read more

One of the features in OS X Lion that has gained some attention is the new Duplicate command that Apple has implemented to replace the age-old Save As feature in the Mac OS. The Save As function has become a regular option in programs that many have relied on, and to see it changed in Lion has raised some concern and disappointment; however, exploring the feature should show that it can perform similar functions as the Save As feature, albeit not without question to its necessity.

Since early in their development, computer systems have had basic Save commands to preserve … Read more

Recently some OS X users have experienced problems in which their contact lists end up getting a number of No Name vCard entries. When this problem happens, these entries seem to accumulate over time to the point where thousands will fill the Address Book. In addition, the entries also show up on iOS devices that are being synced to the Mac.

One user on the Apple Discussion Communities suggested the issue may be from a MobileMe server error, as he was informed of by MobileMe support, so if you are experiencing this issue you might try contacting Apple's support … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates to a couple of maintenance utilities, one file duplicate management tool, and two file recovery utilities.

Maintenance

Two popular cleaning and maintenance programs have been updated this past week. OnyX is a free utility that interfaces … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates to file recovery software, some drive monitoring utilities, and duplicate file management tools.

Files and filesystem Sometimes locating duplicate files (especially groups of them after migrating files) can be useful for clearing up hard-drive space. GrupaDupa, … Read more

This awkwardly named utility (now known as "Better Rename" in the Mac App Store) can be extremely useful in some very specific situations. Anyone who needs to rename large batches of files on a daily basis--especially Web developers and anybody working with lots of photos or audio files--should definitely check out A Better Finder Rename. Most of what this app does can also be done with the Finder and Automator, but nowhere near as quickly nor as easily.

ABFR offers a huge number of renaming options, everything from modifying text and adding sequence numbers to changing formats and … Read more

Directory Report 34 bundles several system utilities in one flexible program. Its core is the venerable Print Directory, which displays tree views of selected directories or entire disks that you can save or print to a wide range of outputs. Directory Report also finds duplicate files and directories and compares directories, even with an outside program. It can rename multiple files in sequence; change the created, modified, and accessed dates of files; change file owners; compute checksums; run from the command line; and more.

Directory Report's wizard browsed to our User Account as a starting root directory (you can … Read more

Drive Genius is a hard-working hard-drive utility from longtime Mac developers Prosoft Engineering, with the honorable distinction of being employed at the Apple Store Genius Bar as part of their ProCare Yearly Tune Up service.

The interface of Drive Genius shares some similarities with that of its data-recovery sister program Data Rescue: you navigate through a 3D "tool arena," a sort of virtual lazy Susan of hard-drive tasks that's fast and fluid enough to not be annoying (and it's actually kind of fun). You choose from six primary tasks, Information (with detailed readouts on S.M.… Read more

Duplicate images can take up a lot of space on your hard drive, but identifying and deleting them can be a major hassle. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder promises to make this process easier, and it does, to some extent. Depending on the number of duplicates you have, this may or may not be the program for you.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive. Users simply select the folders they want to scan for duplicates and then click the Start Search button. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder scanned our hard drive quickly and then displayed the results as a list … Read more