Duplicate File Finder

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 28, 2009
Updated • Jun 1, 2017
Software, Windows software
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14

Duplicate Cleaner scans the Windows operating system for duplicate files, and provides you with tools to remove those from the device.

Duplicate files can take up valuable storage space on computer systems. They are created accidentally most of the time, but there are situations where duplicate files are created on purpose. Scenarios that fall into the first category include file downloads from the Internet, especially if you download archives with lots of files, photo collections, or files created by programs you run on the operating system.

On purpose duplicates however may be created by backups or for safekeeping for instance. Most duplicate files are media related, mainly images, videos and music. It can be quite cumbersome and time consuming to check the files on a computer system for duplicates. This is especially true when large collections of files are stored on the hard drives and storage devices.

Duplicate Cleaner review

duplicate cleaner search

Duplicate file finders like Duplicate Cleaner aid you in finding duplicates on your computer system

The program is compatible with all recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and is available as a free, non-commercial, version, and a pro version.

The free version is feature limited, but still sufficiently powerful to be of use to the majority of home users.

Duplicate Cleaner uses a tab-based system in its interface. The two main tabs that you will work with are called search criteria and scan location.

Search criteria lists search related options. They are:

  • Find files with same content or ignore content.
  • Find files by: same file name, file extension, create date/time, modified date/time
  • File filters to include or exclude files.
  • File sizes to only include files in a certain range by setting minimum and maximum sizes.
  • File dates by only included files created or modified between a certain date range.
  • Exclude zero size files.
  • Don't follow NTFS junctions and mount points.
  • Count hard links in file.

This gives you a lot of control over the process. The most thorough option is the content comparison parameter which will use MD5 checks by default. You can switch the algorithm to byte to byte comparison instead in the program options. The second tab, scan locations, defines where the search will take place.

You can select connected hard drives, or folders for the scan, and may add multiple locations. You may enable or disable the inclusion of subfolder searches for each selected location individually.

The scan time is fast, really fast. While it depends on a lot of factors, such as the selected locations, number of files, size of files, speed of the drives or RAM, it was quite fast regardless of what I threw at it.

Tip: It is recommended that you enable the ignoring of 0-byte files on the search criteria tab as you will end up with duplicates otherwise if you leave the content duplicate file check enabled.

The results tab lists all duplicate files, and a selection assistant. Matches are added to groups, listed next to each other in the listing, and color coded on top of that so that it is easier to distinguish between different groups.

duplicates

You can select files manually now for removal, use the built-in search, or filters. The selection assistant on the other hand helps you mark files automatically which is useful if you have to deal with thousands of files.

You can use it to select the largest, smallest, newest, or oldest file for instance, the file with the shortest or longest name, or have the program mark all but one file in the same group and folder. All that is left to do then is to hit the file removal button to remove all marked files.

Comparison to Pro

Duplicate File Finder Pro supports the following features that the free version does not support:

  • Image Mode to find resized, rotated, flipped or edited images. Also supports the scanning of raw camera formats, and tag matching.
  • Music files mode to compare by song tags or audio content.
  • Find duplicate folders.
  • Move or copy duplicate files.
  • More filters to scan results by file types, paths, groups and more.
  • Scan and delete files inside zip archives.
  • Commercial environment support.

Verdict

The free version of Duplicate File Finder is an excellent program that helps you find duplicate files on Windows machines. While it lacks support for some nice to have features, such as copying or moving duplicate files before deletion, it will appear to most home users regardless of that.

Summary
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Software Name
Duplicate C
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Administration
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Comments

  1. nanol said on June 19, 2013 at 7:35 am
    Reply

    Ashisoft Free Duplicate File Finder is the best application for finding and removing duplicate files… It has advanced features with good user interface… Give it a try.

  2. blue_bsod said on February 11, 2013 at 7:16 pm
    Reply

    For Photo’s only, I prefer, “DuplicatePhotoFinder”,

    http://duplicatefinder.firmtools.com/

    It can not only search for duplicates based on name, we can set the degree of duplication from 1% to 100%. I will find duplicates regardless of the file format (Jpg, Png, Bmp, GIF, PCX…), file size, photo dimensions, and even colour (black and white versions or off colour versions of the same file) and it will list how close in percentages the files are similar. It even finds files with watermarks and their duplicates with the water marks removed or cropped off.

    The free version will only find the duplicates, it will not let you sort the results page, swap the duplicates or allow them to be selected/grouped to be deleted.

    But as for finding duplicate photos, there is no better program for finding multiple copies.

  3. alan_jader said on December 7, 2010 at 3:26 am
    Reply

    I can recommend http://www.dublicatefilesdeleter.com its as nice as this one of Andrew

  4. Glen said on July 17, 2009 at 1:31 pm
    Reply

    i find Duplicate Finder 2009 is very advance duplicate file finder in the market…

    Free : http://www.duplicate-finder-pro.com

    1. Andrew said on November 30, 2009 at 9:37 pm
      Reply

      I can recommend Duplicate Checker.
      http://www.duplicatechecker.com
      Features for finding duplicate images, photos, any music files, etc are available.

  5. Roman ShaRP said on May 6, 2009 at 2:12 am
    Reply

    CloneSpy is the best for me too.

  6. Midnight_Voice said on April 30, 2009 at 1:20 pm
    Reply

    Duplicate Cleaner’s Readme says ‘Windows Vista installations are currently untested/unsupported’ :-(

  7. Noel said on April 29, 2009 at 7:49 am
    Reply

    CloneSpy is my favorite, no need to install, wide variety of options to choose from and pretty fast. If you like it, make sure to donate the author (Disclaimer: I am not the author but a very satisfied user, it has helped me a lot)

  8. Jeannie said on April 29, 2009 at 12:19 am
    Reply

    doublekiller free hands down!
    checks by crc and is fast! and accurate!

    [code]
    http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller/download.htm
    [/code]

  9. Someone said on April 28, 2009 at 11:15 pm
    Reply

    The software is called “Duplicate Cleaner”, not “Duplicate File Finder”

  10. iampriteshdesai said on April 28, 2009 at 6:13 pm
    Reply

    WTF, where is the link??

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