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[LisaRCT]

Bummer!   :-(

I just spent hours combing through my library getting rid of the many duplicate files that have accumulated.

Apparently when a second file was named the same as an already existing file, it was named with a "(1)" or a "(2)" after it so that windows would allow it.

To make matters worse, it has ALSO occurred when I changed my file/directory criteria within MC to eliminate the Album folder, and went from: Artist/Album/Artist - Album - Track - Name to
Artist/Artist - Album - Track - Name.  When I did this MC apparently decided to leave many of the original files in their "Artist/Album" folders and simply copy them to their new locations, thus creating additional duplicates.

Thirdly, when I selected these duplicates in MC's file list and hit 'Shift-Delete' chosing to send them to my recycle bin . . . .  only to finish up and find the Recycle Bin empty!!
Where did these files go??  Did MC merely ignore my request to place them in the recycle bin and 'flush' them?  Or did it decide not to delete them at all?? I hate to even look.

Now when I reported the first problem listed above, Jim had said this was a Windows issue, or due to read-only files . . . . however, I do not believe this is not the case (and they are NOT read-only).  The first situation I describe I imagine could be some windows issue, but unlikely (this is a technique usually used by software, I do not recall having seen windows do this).  However, since the second situation I described was all a result of an  MC operation, performed by MC, and within MC, thus appearing to be an MC issue.

Has anyone else found such a situation to have occurred?

[dragyn]

Thirdly, when I selected these duplicates in MC's file list and hit 'Shift-Delete' chosing to send them to my recycle bin . . . .  only to finish up and find the Recycle Bin empty!!

That's the thing with windows. If you don't set the recycle bin to use 100% of the drive, it will start deleting files from the HD when full. I don't know what the default is. I think it's like 10% or something. If a file is bigger than the allowed space, windows will confirm the deletion.

Here's what I do:

I have my MC setup to use playlists instead of using shift-delete. I have a playlist group called "Recycle Bin". In it I have 3 playlists. One is called "Duplicates", the other is "Deleted Items" and the last is "Hidden Items". The Hidden Items are files I don't want in my Library but I don't want them deleted either. In MC, if you just delete a file from the database (not HD), everytime you re-import, the file comes back. This takes care of it.

In my root of Media Library, I exclude the playlist group and all files that land in the group are all hidden.

Why do I do this? Well for one, I don't want to accidentally delete anytihng. 2, MC really needs a lot of work in the copy/move/rename department. That is so bugged out right now I don't trust it to do anything. When I start to run low on space, I look in the Deleted Item first and then delete them once I see everything will be alright.

I think MC could benifit using a Recycle Bin in the library. That way, nothing would be accidentally lost until MC confirms the deletion.

[LisaRCT]

Thanks for the tip Dragyn, but my recycle bin was empty when I started deleting and was STILL empty when I was through   ?

[KingSparta]

"Norton Protected Files"

From Norton Utilities 2004 Works Well

[Monkeyboy]

Lisa, I have just been deleting juplicated of files that I thought should not be there for any reason. Just thought it was me though, like you they have (1) etc after the name.
Rich

[LisaRCT]

Thanks Monkeyboy  

Do I hear any others??    ?

King, "Norton Protected Files" works well for doing what, exactly??
I do not understand what you are trying to tell me.  

[modelmaker]

"Norton Protected Files"

It allows you to recover deleted files.

[KingSparta]

Thanks Monkeyboy  

Do I hear any others??    ?

King, "Norton Protected Files" works well for doing what, exactly??
I do not understand what you are trying to tell me.  

with Norton Utilities you can set it up to save all deleted files no matter what and you can reserve the amount of space you want and # of days to keep all deleted data.

if your worried about deleteing things and then recovering them Norton Utilities will do it.

[LisaRCT]

OK Thank you King, now I gather what you were gettin' at  

But actually my problem is not that they were not in the Recycle Bin to restore, but rather they weren't in the Recycle Bin so now I am not sure if they are really gone   ?
Well, short of searching for them all over again.  Besides I only mentioned that to reinforce that there is something screwy going on here, and MC may be responsible.

[KingSparta]

But actually my problem is not that they were not in the Recycle Bin to restore, but rather they weren't in the Recycle Bin

the problem\question is how big is the windows recycle bin?
This i am not sure

If it only holds 50 megs and you delete a 100 megs of files would they all be in the recycle bin?

Answer: No

And also not everything deleted and depending on how it is deleted within a program will never hit the recycle bin.

so could it be a bug, yes maybe i have not tested it

but again if you wish to protect your self you need to use something other than windows recycle bin it really is not trust worthy to save everything like norton utilities will no matter how it was deleted (other than format)

[gpvillamil]

Thirdly, when I selected these duplicates in MC's file list and hit 'Shift-Delete' chosing to send them to my recycle bin . . . .  only to finish up and find the Recycle Bin empty!!

In my root of Media Library, I exclude the playlist group and all files that land in the group are all hidden.

What does this mean? What exactly do you do to achieve this?

[LisaRCT]

I am getting the impression that I am somehow failing to make myself clear, and that people are misunderstanding what the problem is.  

Or perhaps visa-versa ?

[Zarius]

Dragyn: In my root of Media Library, I exclude the playlist group and all files that land in the group are all hidden.

gpvillamil: What does this mean? What exactly do you do to achieve this?

I believe what Dragyn does is makes a playlist - let's just call it 'Recycle Bin' for example - and add's files to that, rather than deleting them.  Now this is good, but these files would still show up in the Media Library, so you just go and right-click on 'Media Library' and select 'Edit View Scheme'.  Then under step 4 (the search box at the bottom) simply type -[Playlist]="Recycle Bin]  ...these files will no longer show up anywhere under the Media Library (not sure about smart playlists though... how do you deal with them Dragyn?)
[size=-2] (the square brackets around 'Recycle Bin' stop it from matching 'My Recycle Binding' or whatever - no square bracket at the front, since this stops it from matching the proper playlist if it's under a group... anyone know the exact match for a playlist under a group?)[/size]

LisaRCT:
Not sure about the whole delete them and they're not in the recycle bin problem... I've had no problems with this (well, a whole bunch of files were in the bin, I didn't verify every single one), but then that's off a 178 gig partition (so it should have a good size bin)... could this be part of the problem? IE: Recycle bin was too small for the whole batch and MC didn't handle it well? (you can check the size by right-clicking on the bin and selecting properties). Other than that I have no idea what the problem would be.

I haven't used the 'Rename from Properties' function much, the one time I've used it it seemed to work fine, so I can't comment on that.

[LisaRCT]

Actually the problem was that the recycle bin (while adequately sized) was empty when I started.  
Upon deleting groups of files (anywhere from 3 to 30 in a group at one time, for a total of several hundred files deleted), MC asked if I wished to
1-Remove from Library, 2-Send to Recycle Bin, or 3-Delete from drive, I chose #2 - Send to Recycle Bin (for each and every  group of files I deleted).

When I was done, to my surprise, there were ZERO files in the recycle bin.

Where did they go?  MC supposedly deleted them to the recycle bin . . .  did it actually fail to delete them or merely bypass the recycle bin sending them off into oblivion?

My concerns are:

1-Why were there duplicate files?  MC was not told to alter filenames to avoid conflicts by putting (1) after the name.

2-Why were there duplicated files in cases where MC had been told to move them to a new directory?
Instead it appears that MC copied them to the new location causing additional duplicates.

The recycle bin thing is not my major concern . . . . I do not wish to recover them . . . .  I am just seeing this as more cause for concern over the file handling and whether there is a problem with this within MC.

[zevele10]

In my opinion ,what happened was the same that if you want to delete a big file or folder from Exploere: you got a popup:'This file is to big to be send to the recycle bin, do you want to delete it straight away'

Just , operating from inside Mc, you did not get the popup

Beside this , how do you get 1 or 2 after a song?
If i rip two times the sa,e cd by mistake ,i just got twice the same song without 1 or 2 at the end...?

[LisaRCT]

Nope Zevele, the files were definately NOT too big for the recycle bin.

Also, I do not know how the same files were created with a (1) or a (2) after them rather than being asked if I wanted to replace the original file with one with the same name.

[Nolonemo]

Normally in Windows (98 and 2000, I assume it's the same for XP), when you hit the "delete" key after selecting a file, it's sent to the recycle bin.  But if you hit shift-delete, the file bypasses the recycle bin and is just deleted without showing up in the bin.  At first I thought that was what had happened to you, but in a later post you talked about the three-option dialog box that pops up when you delete something in MC, so I'm confused.

You can recover the deleted files, however, even though they are not in the recycle bin, with a file recovery program (the files are still somewhere on your hard drive unless overwritten with new data).  But if you want to do this, stop using your computer because using the computer may result in the "erased" files being overwritten with new data.  Use a friend's maching to download a file recovery program you can run from a floppy disk.

[Zarius]

zevele:
Beside this , how do you get 1 or 2 after a song?
If I rip two times the same cd by mistake, I just get twice the same song without 1 or 2 at the end...?

LisaRCT:
Also, I do not know how the same files were created with a (1) or a (2) after them rather than being asked if I wanted to replace the original file with one with the same name.

Yeah, MC makes them with a (1), (2), etc if you rerip a cd.  You may not notice them because they will be 'named' in MC exactly the same, it's only the filename that changes.  This can be handy if you accidently rip a couple of unknown cd's before tagging them (I've done this), however the majority of the time you'd want a dialog coming up asking 'Overwrite or Rename?' (though this could get annoying when you are autoripping heaps of cd's during the course of a day, you'd put one in and walk back an hour later to find it one the first track with a question... so again, this is best set as an option 'Confirm duplicate rips' or something, with the default set to on.)

These duplicates shouldn't be too hard to find though... just do a search (either in windows or MC) for ).  ...there shouldn't be too many other files that have that... then you can just go into the directory where the file is and make sure it is a duplicate (you could also run a MD5 dupe checker program, but I'm not 100% that would find them, I think I recall reading that two rips of the same song from the same cd can result in slightly different files).

Windows also does this kind of duplicate renaming, if you copy a file a couple of times in the same directory you'll get "Copy (3) of Blah.blh", although this has the number in the middle, not the end (similar case in Temporary Internet Files... though these has square brackets, eg Index[1].htm).

[zevele10]

OK Cause in Mc ,you do not see the 1 or 2
But thanks for the info
It is such a mess to delete songs that ,until now i deleted all and re-riped
Now ,i will have a look at the file name