2019-01-11 05:18:16 / Posted by Rosa Reyes to Utility Follow @ Rosa
How to delete duplicate files on external hard drive on Mac? What is the best duplicate finder for Mac to find and remove duplicates from internal and external storage? You will find answers here.
As time goes, you may download and store more and more files on your Mac. The older your Mac is, the more likely your hard drive is running out of space. To free up space on Mac, one solution is to get rid of unwanted files such as duplicate files. Another solution is to transfer part of your files to an external hard drive. However, when you transfer files back and forth between your Mac and external hard drive, duplicate files may end up on both. With both solutions, it can help if you know how to find and delete duplicate files effectively.
Use Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac to eliminate duplicate files with just a click. This app can:
How to delete duplicate files such as photos that are stored on an external hard drive? I have over 15,000 duplicate photos on my iPhoto, 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 which could help me to find and remove these duplicate photos on Mac? Any help will be greatly appreciated. ― Asked by a Mac user
Why are there so many duplicate files on my Mac? Duplicate files are almost inevitable and can be due to file transfer, unnecessary backup, app (such as iTunes) bugs, etc. They can also occur when you import files to Mac from an external hard drive where duplicates already exist.
Whatever the cause is, it’s important to clean them up. By doing so, you can free up storage space, keep your files more organized and improve efficiency. The good news is you can use software to scan your Mac and external hard disk, find the duplicates scattered around, and remove them all at once. Duplicate cleaner software varies in performance, efficiency, ease of use and accuracy. For Mac users, Cisdem Duplicate Finder can be the best choice. It:
You can follow the steps to delete duplicate files on external hard drive, Mac or other devices using Cisdem duplicate file finder. Here we will take external HD as an example.
Connect your external hard drive to Mac. Drag the hard drive into this app. Click the Scan button. You can stop scanning anytime, and real-time scanning results will be provided.
Once the scan is finished, click the Show Results button to view a pie chart overview. Duplicates files will be classified and displayed by file type such as images and music. You can sort them by name, size, etc. and search among them with keywords.
Three preview modes are provided, allowing you to easily preview side by side. Previewing can be useful. For example, before deleting duplicate photos on external hard drive on Mac, you can preview and compare them in detail side by side.
By default, Smart Select will automatically select duplicates for you to delete. There are also other selection options such as Select Newest. Click the Delete button to eliminate duplicate images, audios, etc. from your external hard drive.
Note: You can recover deleted files in Trash. However, please note that selected files on the external drive can only be erased permanently.
When you use this app to find and eliminate duplicate files on Mac and external hard drives, these tips can be useful.
Before you click the Scan button in the first step, click the gray setting icon in the upper right corner of the app’s interface. Under the General tab, you can easily specify the file size range to be scanned.
Under General, you can choose Move to Trash, Remove Permanently or Move to Folder.
Under the Ignore List tab, you can exclude folders, files or file extensions from scanning. This would be especially useful when you scan the whole hard drive and want to skip certain folder(s).
Also under the Ignore List tab, you can enable or disable the Ignore System Hidden Files and Folders option.
How to find and delete duplicate files on Mac and external hard drive? There is more than one way. You can use software to identify and eliminate duplicates or do it by hand. It's not easy to manually find all the duplicate items on your internal and external hard drives on Mac. And it will take a lot of time and patience. Anyway, here’s how.
1. Go to Finder, choose a folder where you think duplicates may exist, say Documents, and use shortcut Command-F. A search bar will appear.
How to find duplicate files on external hard drive Mac by hand? Just choose your external hard drive in the Devices sidebar and then enter the said keyboard shortcut.
2. 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.
3. Sort the listed files by name or other parameters, take a look at them, and find the duplicate files on Mac. You can move the unwanted ones to Trash.
There is another option when you choose to find Duplicate files on Mac without using software. Note that it only find duplicates. You need to delete the files manually. Terminal comes with every Mac. Below is how to use it.
1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utility. Find and open Terminal.
2. If you want to find the duplicate files in a Videos folder, say Downloads, you can use the cd command by typing cd ~/Downloads and press the return key.
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.
Open the file duplicates.txt and you will find a list of duplicate files. Now you can manually find and delete them.
Above are the three methods on how to delete duplicate files on external hard drive on Mac. Duplicate files can be a big space eater on your internal and external hard drives. If your Mac does not have enough space, it may run slowly, and there may not even be enough free space for macOS update. By getting rid of useless duplicate files with the help of software like Cisdem Duplicate Finder which is picked as the best duplicate file finder for Mac in 2018, you can make more storage room on your Mac. Do you think this guide on how to find and delete duplicate files helpful? Leave a comment and share your thoughts and opinions.
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There are also many users don’t know how to recover data from external hard drive. External hard drive data recovery sounds profound and difficult for those people who are not particularly proficient in Mac. Actually, it is not as hard as you imagine, an application, Cisdem Data Recovery can help you to recover deleted files from external hard drive easily.
Many users don’t know how to recover data from hard drive on Mac. So when they deleted some data by mistake, they got worried. Actually, recover data from hard drive is not as difficult as you imagine. This article, I will list the detailed steps to recover files from hard drive, follow my instructions, recovering data from hard drive can be a piece of cake. Can’t believe? Continue to read it.
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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.