Duplicate Files in SampleTank?

[bayswater]

My backup volume for sample libraries is getting full. I suspected I had some files backed multiple times in different folders, and went about looking for duplicates I can delete.

A couple of duplicate file finders report over 1,000 duplicates in my SampleTank sound file backup. A check on a few of these with the terminal Diff command found they are in fact exact duplicates.

Checking the actual ST3 sample library, not the backup, finds about 9G of duplicates, many of them in the same folder, including a 1.5G piano sample set. These are exactly the same file with two different file names. They are not aliases or symbolic links.

Checking other sample libraries revealed very few duplicate files. Disk space is cheap, but these libraries pile up.

Seems to me, if this is real, it's pretty sloppy on IKM's part.

[mikehalloran]

Happened to me, too. I couldn't figure out it happened but am pretty sure that I did it. Possibly it occurred during a minor version update and the installer switched directories. I really don't know.

I wound up deleting all ST and Miroslav libraries, then reinstalling the latest build.

[mhschmieder]

I seem to have to add 1 TB a year at this point, which is ridiculous even that today's prices and presents backup challenges.

I was just thinking about this today, how many vendors add duplicate files and/or do sloppy bookkeeping on updates. I'm usually too scared to delete stuff "just in case", and also as it can be time-consuming to load every Kontakt preset and make sure all samples are still found.

On top of that, there are missing samples in quite a few commercial products, and vendors DO NOT GET BACK TO ME even when I spend a lot of my own time helping them to quickly resolve the issue should they choose to bother. This also lowers my faith in safely deleting apparently excess files.

One area where I think a lot of disc space could be saved is in deleting 16-bit samples (and associated presets) where 24-bit samples are also loaded, and similarly with low sample rate versions of products that have high sample rate versions side by side.

Of course, even that would be time-consuming to cull, so maybe not worth it.

The bigger culprit though, seems to be EXACT duplicates that are due to sloppy installers that either leave behind too many recursive artifacts or don't clean up unneeded older files.