Replace duplicates with symlinks [SOLVED]
Alan Milnes
deep64blue at itguru.org.uk
Sat Jul 26 19:06:22 UTC 2008
Alan Milnes wrote:
> I've just invested in a 1Tb external HDD and am consolidating various
> backups onto it. What I'd like to do is identify and remove all
> duplicate files on it but replace them with symlinks to the original.
>
> I've googled and found fslint and fdupes, the latter looks promising as
> you can export the findings to a text file - it produces a line like this:-
OK the answer is FSlint which wins the prize for the biggest discrepancy
between usefulness and documentation!! Here's how I did it.
1) sudo apt-get fslint
2) Apps -> System Tools -> FSlint
3) Removed my home directory from the search path and added my USB drive.
4) Selected 'duplicates' then 'find'
5) Once it had finished searching clicked on 'merge', *without*
selecting any of the results. It's really counter-intuitive, it runs
the merge process against those files not selected.
That's it.
Am now running it on my 84% full 1Tb drive - not sure how long it will
take!!
Alan
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