What is DupLocator?

Midnight Software's DupLocator is a disk utility designed to find and delete unnecessary, space-wasting duplicate files on one or more volumes on a hard drive, floppy disk, or a network. The program can also perform file-modification commands such as move, rename, copy, and launch files; change file attributes such as color, type, and creator; and create new folders. DupLocator can serialize floppy disks, rename and catalog them, and then print the catalog. DupLocator works reasonably well but needs some improvement.

You open the program to DupLocator’s Search and Tool palettes. The Search palette allows you to select a single disk volume to scan and lets you initiate the scan using the Search button. After DupLocator searches the disk, the main window lists all the files that are on the selected disk, and the Tool palette, which has buttons to perform the file commands, becomes active. You can select individual files, or group several files using the Add to Batch command. Files can then be deleted, moved, copied, or given color labels. If you own either Aladdin Systems’ StuffIt Deluxe or Symantec/Fifth Generation Systems’ DiskDoubler, DupLocator can create compressed archives from one or more files in the main window or in a batch. You can select and scan additional disks, adding their contents to the main window. In the Search palette the program keeps a running total of the number of volumes and files scanned, and the number of duplicate files it finds. You inspect the found duplicates by opening the Duplicate Files list from the program’s View menu.

DupLocator does a fair job of locating duplicate files. Unfortunately, it determines that two files are duplicates if they have identical names — occasionally two files with the same name aren’t true duplicates. For instance, an alias can have the same name as the original. Another example is CE Software’s QuicKeys, which creates a key-set file for each application’s special macro key set and gives that key-set file the same name as the application. So if you have created a QuicKeys key set for ClarisWorks, the key-set file is named ClarisWorks in the QuicKeys Preferences folder.

When you view duplicate files in DupLocator’s main window, you must compare the type, creator, size, and modification date of files flagged as duplicates to decide which ones, if any, should be deleted. When you decide a file is a true duplicate, you add it to a batch and delete it. rd like to see Midnight Software add some intelligence to the duplicate search. There should also be a preference that allows you to not flag aliases as duplicate files, and you should be able to create a list of the other file types that DupLocator should ignore.

One problem with using DupLocator as a general file utility is that you must always build a list of files on a disk with the program’s Search button before you can perform file operations. This is in contrast to other file utilities with many of DupLocator’s features, such as Prairie Soft’s DiskTop... Simply opening one of these programs from the Apple menu presents you with a list of files and folders on the disk, and you can immediately select and perform a file operation. If you already own a file utility that you can use to perform these functions, DupLocator may not give you enough additional usefulness to justify the purchase.

I had a few problems with DupLocator. The list of files from a volume or drive must fit into RAM, so if your Mac has limited RAM, you are limited in the number of files you can search at one time. The default memory allocation under System 7 is 1MB (the program will still run with 512K); 1MB of RAM allows approximately 9000 files in the search list. The maximum number of files the program can handle is 16,380, so if you need to catalog large disk volumes, you should probably not use DupLocator. I experienced repeated crashes when I attempted to catalog a 1GB hard drive that contained over 18,000 files; the program should handle this extreme situation with more grace. Also, there is a bug in the Color menu that causes the color labels to display in black and white, even though the program changes file colors with no problem.

DupLocator is a good general file utility for new Macintosh users. Experienced users most likely have one or more utilities that contain most of the features in DupLocator; if so, DupLocator may not give them enough added utility to justify the cost.

Negrino, Tom. (January 1994). DupLocator. Macworld. (pgs. 65, 67).

Download DupLocator for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II