Too many Duplicate MP3's!! Help me please :(

[lagrz]

Lately I noticed that my music folder has grown from being 30 gigabytes jumping to well over 80 gigabytes. I noticed that the majority of them are duplicates (possibly because I backed up my iPod). I would consider using the show duplicates option on iTunes but it really is a drag having to individually select each file (even using control click) and deleting them. I found a few tools online that may help me with this issue in an automated way but I personally don't want to dish out $29. Is there any freeware or open-source program that I can use to automatically delete duplicate music files? Keep in mind that I have it all backed up on an external drive and can use any platform from Windows, OSX, or Linux.

Any Help would be appreciated thank you

[fishtoprecords]

What is a duplicate? Do you mean exactly the same file?
if so, you can compare md5sum and see which are identical.

But with MP3 files, the same audio can have different tags, and then the checksums are different.

Can you program, say a little Perl? you could right a small perl program to compare the checksums. There are even libraries in CPAN to read the audio portions and the tags, so you could compare them.

I can write the code, but it would take me more than $30 worth of time, so I'd probably just pay.

[zeronome]

i'd like to know as well. i have much many songs, and have neglected cleaning them up.

[lagrz]

it is pretty much same copy of file just name and name1 on the folders. i would do perl but my scripting ability is pretty bad.

[fishtoprecords]

assuming you are on a good OS, you can do it in steps.

shasum * | sort > foo
then look through foo and the dups will be obvious.

[chris3d]

Can you by chance sort the folder by the data associated with the songs?
(artist, title, album, etc)

[lagrz]

I came across clone cleaner lite yesterday and gave it a shot.. (I have everything backed up on my external drive anyway). It's free and seemed to have fit my needs I just re-imported all the music back on iTunes and no longer see the duplicates. Also shaved off nearly 30 gigs which brings it back to what the original folder size was

BTW Thx John2002 for your recommendation.

here's the link:
http://www.clonecleaner.com/HCCdownload.html

[fishtoprecords]

Originally Posted by lagrz

Also shaved off nearly 30 gigs which brings it back to what the original folder size was

You do realize that having a single folder over 32 gigs is a sin, right?

[lagrz]

its the way iTunes somehow organized it o.O in any case its not all under one folder its all tree'd by artist

[veronicazilla]

I think we're doing this question on the show next week, but since you're asking now...

iTunes:
View > Show Duplicates

Then just delete the dupes and you're good to go.