Cleaning up ten years of photos
I finally sat down with the archive: around forty thousand files spread over four drives and two phones. The goal was simple — one folder per year, no duplicates, nothing lost.
The method
Copy first, delete never (until the end). Sort by capture date rather than file name, flag exact duplicates by checksum, and only then look at near-duplicates by eye. That last step took most of the weekend.
Result
Eleven thousand fewer files, a tidy year/month layout and a second copy on a drive that lives in a drawer at my parents' place.