Here is my Computer & iTunes setup (why am I listing this, read on):
1. I'm using a 2.8 GHz Intel core 2 Duo processor iMac.
2. It has 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
3. My iTunes library is on an external HD connected by FW 800 and USB 2
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack/
(The V3 enclosure/hub has multiple chipsets to handle both!)
4. I have a Seagate 1 TB HD (w/32MB buffer) inside.
After many, many hours of running SS over & over & over again, here are 10 things that I've found that seem to help SS remove my Dupe's "BETTER":
1. Realize that looking for and eliminating Dupes is a very, very processor intensive job... Quit all your other App's while running SS.
2. If you have lots of Widgets running in the background, turn them off also!
3. If you have a Mac, download and install iStat Pro (FREE/donation) which is "a highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes".
http://islayer.com/apps/istatpro/
4. When you first start SS, check how much processor usage (using iStatPro) Song Sergeant is using. I was shocked to see SS using almost 100%! I always figured that I had plenty processor available but that is not the case... Once I "dedicated" my processor to running SS (by quitting other App's), It seemed to run better, removing more dupe's before error messaging out.
5. Multiple copies of long files seemed to cause the most trouble for SS; I noticed that when I had several copies of the same long audio file plus their AAC version, they gave SS the most problems removing their dupe's.
6. If you discover any songs that you cannot convert to AAC (Apple's much smaller file format -see iTunes/Advanced/Create AAC Version) remove them from your music library until SS has finished removing all the other Dupe's then add them again. I had a couple songs that played just fine but when I tried to convert them, I found that the files were damaged and I think SS was "hanging up" when it got to scanning those few songs instead of skipping over them to the 99.9% that were undamaged...
7. If SS keeps error messaging before quitting when trying to remove the same song, try removing the check box for that song (so SS will "skip it") and see if SS will then continue working on the remaining songs; I found some songs that seem to just take forever for SS to remove, while others went very fast!
8. Be careful when you are importing songs and DON'T import songs you already have in your library because it takes time to get rid of Dupe's.; it sounds simple but when you have lots of converted music (say from records & cassettes to digital versions with home made playlists) then the temptation is to just import 'em all and let Song Sergeant sort 'em out, BUT as your music library grows in size sorting becomes harder to do! ★ One trick when importing from a CD is to make sure you import all files as AAC (iTunes/Pref's/General/Import Settings/Import Using: AAC Encoder) and they taake up MUCH less disc space both on your HD and in your iPod!
9. Reduce any playlists with more than say 75 songs to smaller playlists (i.e. Playlist1, Playlist2) as this also seem to help SS work better.
10. Remove any playlists that you either don't use any more or don't need! I used to have lots of playlists of individual Artists because it was easier to look for their songs under Playlists in iTunes Left column instead of choosing to sort iTunes by Artist; remember that the more Playlists you have the longer it will take SS to check each and every song on each and every Playlist against each and every Dupe'd song!