Free space taken by extra copies on a drive

A drive can end up holding the same recording twice: a folder copied onto it twice, or a file renamed and then copied again. Library > Remove extra copies finds such copies by their contents and keeps one on each drive.

Before you start

It finds copies by their content fingerprint, so turn on Settings > Advanced > Recognise renamed copies by their contents and connect each drive until its fingerprints are done. The window warns about a drive whose files are not all fingerprinted.

Which copy stays

1. A copy in an edit pack.
2. The name your other drives use for that recording.
3. The name that matches the recording time.
4. The name the camera's rules know.
5. The name the other copies are copies of: clip.mp4 stays and clip (1).mp4, clip - Copy.mp4 or clip1.mp4 go.

Recordings (video, photos, camera raw and recorder audio) are looked at with their proxies, telemetry, transcripts and info files, and so is music. Documents and other pictures are left alone. A song whose tags you edited in one copy is no longer the same file, so it is not found as a copy. An info file next to each of several photos stays with its own photo, even when the files are identical.

The steps

1. Drives: each drive with extra copies, how many the rules move, the space freed and how many questions are left for you. Untick a drive to leave it alone.
2. Questions: one at a time. Use Look at them to see the files in question; Done brings you back. Choose Move all of them aside to keep none of the copies. A question you leave alone moves nothing.
3. What was decided for you: the copies the rules move, by rule, with the files that move and the copies that stay to look at.
4. Summary: what moves on each drive. Run starts it.

Use Back to change an answer, and Close to leave without changing anything.

Where no rule decides, you are asked by folder: recordings whose copies are in the same folders, say In and Media, are one question, such as Keep the copies in Media, however many there are. Choose Decide each folder pair separately to answer single pairs of folders differently. Only copies in one folder under different names are asked about one by one. Proxies, telemetry and transcripts are never lost: one that only the removed copy has goes next to the copy that stays.

What Run does

Each copy is compared byte for byte with the one that stays; one that differs anywhere stays where it is. The others move into the folder Removed copies (Media Organizer) at the drive's root, keeping their folders. Nothing is deleted. When you are sure, delete that folder yourself. Until you do, a notice at the top of the window says how much space those folders take.

Copies beyond your copy rule

Over the years the same recording often ends up on more drives than your copy rule asks for. Remove extra copies brings each recording down to the number of copies your rule asks for, and frees the space on the drives that are fullest.

• A drive holding the recording without all its companions (say, without its proxy) gives up its copy first, then a drive whose copy no edit pack uses, then the drive with the least free space.
• Copies on drives you marked suitable for editing neither count nor move: those are working copies you free yourself when the work is done. On a drive that is also used for copies, only its working folders are left out.
• Untick a drive in the first step and it gives up nothing; another drive gives up the copy instead.
• Nothing is asked: the copies to move are listed under What was decided for you, with the copies that stay to look at.
• Your drives need not all be connected. Before a copy moves, it is compared with the copy that stays on another drive, so the work for each pair of drives waits until both are connected; the bar at the bottom of the window says which drives to connect.

Camera cards are left out. A drive that is not connected follows when you connect it.