finding duplicate files
 

What's the best (safest) program to use to find duplicate files on my PC? Thanks

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Not sure on a PC. It's pretty easy on the Apple :smiley:

I found the following on the PCWorld web site

While I haven't used either of the recommended programs, PCWorld is usually a reliable source of advice.

Just be careful when deleting any duplicate files unless you are SURE they are duplicates - digital cameras often give different photos the same number, and some system files actually need to be in two different locations - so make sure you do a complete (tested) back-up before deleting anything.





A hard drive is like a family garage--junk expands to fill available space. An SSD behaves very much the same way, but with less space.

A good duplicate file finder will help you reduce your digital junk levels. It can search for files with the same name, the same size, and/or the exact same contents. It helps you examine each file and decide which one to keep. It can ignore small files, so you can concentrate on the more wasteful redundancy.

I'm going to recommend two such programs, both free for non-commercial use.

All things considered, I recommend Digital Volcano's Duplicate Cleaner Free. The attractive, three-tab interface allows the program to provide plenty of options without overwhelming you.


When preparing Duplicate Cleaner for scanning your drive, you can have it examine or ignore file content. You can tell it to consider files with the same name, with similar names, or to ignore names completely. It can also match files by the Created and Modified Dates. A special Audio Mode tab helps you find duplicates of the same song by title, artist, and other such data.

If your hard drive is so overloaded that you hesitate to install even a 5MB program like Duplicate Cleaner Free, go with this old but still workable version of Easy Duplicate Finder. It's portable. You can download it on one computer, put it onto a flash drive, insert the flash drive into your PC, and run it without putting anything on the hard drive. It's not as versatile and easy to use as Duplicate Cleaner Free--or for that matter, as the current version of Easy Duplicate Finder, which is a reasonable alternative to Duplicate Cleaner.

But this old, portable version is not difficult either, and it works. It also has, oddly enough, an icon that makes me think of a public restroom.

Either of these programs should help you free up significant drive space--although you will have to face some decisions that only a human can make.

Searching for duplicate photos has its own challenges and requires specialized software. See Find duplicate photos for more on this. And read the original forum discussion.

Thanks very much. I had a program once but must have uninstalled it.

I have just downloaded Digital Volcano's Duplicate Cleaner Free

It is easy to use and finds duplicates quickly although, as I didn't have any large ones, I didn't delete any of them

Try this program it works great and is free. I use it all the time on my PC, home server and multiple USB drives. The program gives me the option of which drives and what folders I want to compare or I can do them all. It will give you the option of what to do with the dupes. It also allows you to use all drives or just your C: drive. The program allows you to chose which file location you may want to delete or keep the multiple copies.

Another thing about this program is that it will do a CRC (cyclic redundancy check) to make sure the file is EXACTLY the same as the other. If it is one bit off then the files are not the same and will not be flagged.

Find duplicate files with Auslogics Duplicate File Finder

VG