Even though I use MainType frequently, my fonts are scatterd all over my computer (Windows XP Media Edition) across three hard drives. In total the number of fonts will not be much above four thousand and some will be duplicated, triplicated and ?licated!
Hereās a challenge for the ingenuity of posters:
What is the best way of collecting them all together in one folder on say a USB Flash drive?
Iām aware that one answer could be āpatience and hard workā!
Joe.
I think you will have to do it one drive at a time as the Include Subdirectories button doesnāt work on āMy Computer.ā
Select all and copy to a temporary folder, but then what about all the duplicates? Which copy of files of the same name do you want to keep?
I belong to several internet font collection Groups and we have pretty well standardized on certain utilities for fussing with fonts. Using these we are all talking the same dialect.
I started with an improved windows explorer (Directory Opus) that could āfindā .ttf or .otf files from which you could copy into another location. Be careful āmovingā as you can never tell how itās being used by the application. I try keep every font until I can manually select the ones to keep ā using a ārenameā option on equals.
Once they are in a single directory there are tools such as:
Fontrenamer by Philip L. Engel to standardize the external file names ā key to getting rid of random 8.3 font names and using the internal font name as the external file name. Free program and readily available.
Font Organizer by Al Jones will distribute fonts to destination directories by a variety of criteria ā (alphabetic. foundry, family, designer, etc. ) Almost entirely I use alphabetic (a-z). It setups up directories and then uses the first letter of the font name to move/copy them. It renames files when there are same-names already there. (You end up with (1), (2), etc.) Freeware.
Double Killer (Pro) for detecting duplicates based on file name, file size and/or file dates. I think there are two versions where the Pro is shareware. I find it significantly helps get rid of exact duplicates. Itās not perfect as it has troubles with Times.ttf versus Times(1).ttf. There are a couple of tricks to use (file date and/or file size) which can help.
The difficulty with collecting fonts is not to not end up with 37 copies of Arial or Times New Romanā¦ There is no program Iām aware of that can look at two fonts and determine if they are the same design so you end up looking at each font.
By dropping exact copies (same name, same date and same size) you get rid of 30%? of the dupes. Looking at file name and file size) you get rid of another 30%. You then can look at those with the same file name (different dates and sizes) individually. This exercise importantly cuts down on the numbers you have to edit by hand.
You look at the design then start checking designer, version numbers, dates and whatever. (Everything being equal I keep the newest file (file date) - should be most current copy. Arbitrary.
I think these programs are easily found, else let me know and I should do better.
ps If you only have 4k fonts, you havenāt been trying very hard! Another thing: if you have āgrossā 4k fonts you probably only have 1k unique onesā¦ so you could probably some get more. Ask Dave C.
Thank you both for your replies. Heeding all the advice I am now equipped with recommended applications (although Directory Opus is out of my range in price). FontRenamer I already had.
So, all I need now is the patience to proceed!
Thanks 
Joe.
Same boat, but sinking faster!
I had collected 35,000 + fonts before purchasing MainType, and now have around 100,000 scattered in hundreds of folders on two hard drives and 30 CDās. I tried to keep them by Designer or Foundry, then finally just year and month of acquisition. It is too much to look at, much less use efficiently.
Only those I really really like ever get loaded into the Windows Font File, but Iāve possibly never even seen those I would honestly like most of all.
Possibly 30-60% are dupes or renamed knock-offs, as plagiarism is rife in the big companies, and even more so in the amateur ranks. Dick is way ahead of me on dumping the dupes.
At present I try to spend at least an hour a day (hard to maintain) separating them into 4 main Panose Folders and second digit subfolders further divided into alpha-numeric folders.
As 80-90% of my collection were never or improperly Panosed, I use MT to open those that appeal in FC and enter at least the first two Panose digits, then save and move the font to the new Hard Drive location.
Only then dare I try to access them through MT using Project Groups.
Monthly I re-write to my Panose CDās in expectation of the coming hard drive crash.
After looking at so many fonts names no longer mean much.
By Panosing them I will some (Glory Hallelujah) day at least be able to look in the proper folder to find a particular font design.
Searching for something I found this thread. Sorry for jumping in.
I use Neubers good old Typograf to find duplicates, comparing by glyph information, which does find exact duplicates. Does, however, not run very well under Vista.