2020-04-16 04:57:20 / Posted by Rosa Reyes to Utility Follow @ Rosa
This article will show you how to find and delete duplicate files on external hard drive on Mac easily and quickly.
External hard drives are often used for backup purposes such as Time Machine backups. They can also be used to transfer files from computer to computer. Duplicate files may slowly accumulate over time as you use your external hard drive. To make effective use of the storage space on your drive, it’s a good idea to find the duplicate files on it and get them deleted. The article talks about two ways for Mac users to remove duplicate files from external hard drive.
How to find duplicate files on external hard drive on Mac? The best way is to use duplicate file finder software like Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac. It is compatible with macOS 10.10 or later, including macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Download and install Cisdem Duplicate Finder. Open it.
Click the add icon and add hard drives or folders to scan. Click the Scan button.
Once it finishes scanning, you will be presented with the results window. All the duplicate files are listed under the All tab. You can also view them by file type, such as Images, Music and Documents.
There are three preview modes (Thumbnail, List and Info), allowing you to preview pictures, media files and documents without leaving the app. The preview feature can be especially useful when it comes to deleting duplicate photos on external hard drive. You can also zoom in or out for better view.
This duplicate file finder will automatically select duplicate copies for you to delete. Additionally, it provides four selection rules .
You can choose one of them based on your preference. Also, it allows you to select or deselect manually.
On a side note, when it comes to handling similar images, there are eight selection rules available.
Make sure that you have selected the unwanted duplicates. Click the Delete button in the bottom right corner. A message will appear. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.
The duplicates will be permanently removed from your external HD. If it were an internal disk instead of an external one, there would be more removal options available such as Move to Trash.
Note: You can stop the scan process at any time, and real-time scan result will be provided. Don’t eject your external hard drive while the scan or removal is going on.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder main features:
This Cisdem external hard drive duplicate file finder uses MD5 value checksum algorithm and does byte-by-byte comparison when scanning. It generally only takes seconds to scan thousands of files. For a significantly large amount of files, it will take more time.
Here’s the good news! You can exclude files and folders from the scan so as to lessen the time it will take.
In addition to what has been mentioned in the tip above, there are also other options in settings . By customize settings options when needed, you will be rewarded with a more efficient duplicate removal.
How to delete duplicate files on external hard drive mac such as photos that are stored on them? I have over 15,000 duplicate photos on my Photos, half of it stored on the external HD. I tried to find these duplicates manually, but it was a waste of time and energy. Is there a duplicate file finder what could help me to find and remove these duplicate photos on Mac? Any help will be greatly appreciated. ― Asked by a Mac user
How do Mac users find and delete duplicate files on external hard drive? The best way is to use a duplicate file finder for Mac. You can also do it by hand. It's not as hard as it seems. However, it can be a waste of time and energy if there are a lot of duplicate files on your external hard drive. Anyway, here’s how.
Step 1. Plug your external hard drive into Mac. Go to Finder. In the Devices sidebar, select the external drive.
Step 2. Use shortcut Command-F. A search bar will appear.
Step 3. Select Kind among the available search parameters. Select the file kind of your choice in the second dropdown list. Also choose a specific file format if needed.
Step 4. Sort the listed files by name or other parameters, preview and compare, and find the duplicate files. You can move the unwanted ones to Trash.
You can also identify duplicate files on external hard drive or Mac’s internal hard drive with Terminal. Note that it only identify duplicates. You still need to delete the files manually. Terminal comes with every Mac.
Step 1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utility. Find and open Terminal.
Step 2. If you want to find the duplicate files in a folder, say Downloads, you can use the cd command by typing cd ~/Downloads and press the return key.
Step 3. Enter the command: find . -size 20 \! -type d -exec cksum {} \; | sort | tee /tmp/f.tmp | cut -f 1,2 -d ' ' | uniq -d | grep -hif – /tmp/f.tmp > duplicates.txt. Press return.
Step 4. Open the file duplicates.txt and you will find a list of duplicate files. Now you can manually find and delete them.
Why are there so many duplicate files on my Mac? It’s not uncommon to have duplicate files on your Mac and external hard drives. As a matter of fact, duplicate files are almost inevitable.
They can be there due to multiple imports of the same file, multiple copies of backup, app (such as iTunes) bugs, etc. They can occur when you unknowingly transfer files to your external hard disk where the same files already exist. Another cause is file compression. Sometimes we compress photos to make them smaller in size for emailing or uploading. In a case like this, there can be duplicate copies of the same photos. They are identical in content but different in size.
Whatever the cause is, it’s important to clean them up. By doing so, you can free up storage space and keep your files more organized. It will also help if you know how to prevent them from occurring.
Above are the two common ways on how to find duplicate files on external hard drive on Mac. Duplicate files can waste space your internal and external hard drives. By getting rid of useless duplicate files with the help of software like Cisdem Duplicate Finder, you can free up storage space on your external hard disk. Do you think this guide on how to identify and remove duplicate files helpful? Leave a comment and share your thoughts and opinions.
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5 Comments Leave a Reply
I have a lot duplicate picture and movie files on my MacBook, this duplicate file finder app helped me free up 53GB space. I can't express my gratitude in words.
I want to delete duplicate files from other storage device, not only from Mac or external hard drives, can Cisdem duplicate file finder help me do that?
Hi, Melissa, Cisdem DuplicateFinder fully supports deleting duplicate files from Mac HDD, SSD, external hard drives, cameras, iPods, USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.
My hard drive seems to create "duplicates" of all my files. I don't want to check it one by one. Cisdem DuplicateFinder did a great job with me.it works very well and remove duplicate files from my external hard drive quickly.
My mac was running out of space, and i transferred many files to external hard drive. I found many duplicate photos and music and tried to delete them manually. Oh, my god, I even didn't know there is such a nice tool like Cisdem DuplicateFinder that can help me remove them.