Duplicate pictures on Seagate

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Carole67 said:

I have window 7 and I use a Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive (external) Seagate.

I am having a problem with duplicate pictures and even my backup files.

For example I have three scans for one picture. The date for all three is the same and the time for all three is the same. Can I delete two of the pictures?

How many do you want to keep? You can delete 1, 2, or 3.

Normal practice would be to keep an original and one backup, but you may have other intentions?



The numbers are for example scan0045, scan0045 (1) and scan0045 (2). Would deleting any of these numbers cause a problem so I will only have one picture etc.

If you delete 2, you'll have one left. Is that what you want?

This problem is within my entire backup Seagate.

I realize this is a long post, and I hope it is clear enough.

Not clear to me. Obviously, you would have an "original". Do you then want 2 backup copies, 1 backup copy, or something else?

I don't want to do something I should not do but all of these duplicates are taking up space.

What do you want when the smoke clears?

A standard backup application should copy the original to your backup. Nothing more. You'd have an original and one backup. Is that acceptable?

What backup application are you using? I'm guessing it's the Seagate application and that may explain part of the problem.

Normally, if you have a file named Jones on an internal drive and you back it up to an external drive, both files would be named Jones.

Not Jones (1) or Jones (2).

The only reason you might have Jones files named that way is if they are in the same folder and the backup application deliberately altered the name so as not to over-write Jones. Unless of course you deliberately gave them those names with parentheses---unlikely.

I suspect there is something wrong with your backup technique that is causing multiple duplicates with slightly different names. Get to the bottom of why that is.