Most users often download various files from the Internet, music, pictures, videos, documents or applications, which can cause duplicate files on the computer. For example, this can happen due to the start of downloading a file several times, or after copying and pasting an item to another location (without deleting the first file). You can try to search for them manually, or use utilities specially designed for this operation, some of them will be discussed today in the article.
Contents
CCleaner
A very popular cleaning program that affects many partitions, both system and user, when cleaning, and also has the ability to deeply customize. Works with the registry, system junk and applications installed on the device. And also, of course, it searches for duplicate files on the computer.
The interface of the program is made in a simple style, and there should be no difficulties in dealing with the functionality and tools. All you need to do is click on the “Analysis” button, wait for the process to finish, and then “Clean up”. By the way, the section of the program dedicated to working with duplicates is located in the tools.
It is possible to set the sorting of files, which will occur immediately after the search, by name, size, content, extension and editing date. Alternatively, select the “Ignore” checkbox and specify which partitions and paths, with which parameters, files will be skipped during diagnostics. Then it remains to press the “Search” button.
SearchMyFiles
An alternative to the Windows system file search, which, in addition to standard operations, has advanced functionality, for example, search for duplicate video, audio files, as well as search for duplicates of other documents. The search engine is powerful, the main thing is to understand the proposed arsenal of tools. SearchMyFiles is lightweight and does not require installation (it is a portable utility), so you can carry its files on another device (flash drive, disk, etc.).
Before starting, you need to assign search parameters. Set the paths by which SearchMyFiles will scan, as well as exclusion directories, with attributes such as document weight (say, from 500 KB to 7 MB if necessary), time and date of creation or editing, whether the file should be a system file or hidden , or maybe it should be a folder or subfolder. All these settings are specified before starting diagnostics.
Images, pictures that are duplicates are found even when they have different names. Don’t forget to switch the search engine options window to duplicate finding mode.
You can download SearchMyFiles from the official website of the NirSoft company, by choosing at the bottom of the page a custom translation into Russian, from Kondor, or from Solokot, and the second is new, and also maximally adapted to the current version of the software.
DupeGuru
DupeGuru is a cross-platform GUI application designed to find duplicate files of different types on the system. The operating system must be at least Windows 7 to start correctly (it works well for removing duplicate files in Windows 10), or OS X 10.10 or higher. With dupeGuru, you can easily find music that has the same tags, additional information, as well as the name by setting the “music” mode. To scan a photo, set a special mode to search for photos indistinctly, allowing you to find similar pictures on your computer, but not necessarily the same.
Set the Russian language in the “Options” tab to make it easier to familiarize yourself with the interface of the program window. There you can also set DupeGuru to ignore files with a weight below the specified one, delete empty duplicate folders, ignore objects that refer to the file itself (that is, those that are shortcuts).
Gemini 2
If you are wondering how to find duplicate files in Mac OS, as well as how to delete them to free up disk space, then this smart and popular utility among users of this operating system is the answer. Set your preferred sections for scanning (home folder, images, audio, iTunes music library, or your folders and directories) before launching, and then start the analysis with one click of a button. Smart cleaning will display all found duplicate documents, as well as information about them, such as name, extension, creation date, which file it is repeating, and other information.
Gemini 2 is available on a paid basis, with a one-year license cost of $ 19.95 per device. Or you can try it for free, but with limited functionality and not a long program life.
Auslogics Duplicate File Finder
Optimize and free up your computer’s hard drive memory by detecting and deleting backup files from your computer. The entire analysis process is controlled by the user, and the list of found copies is displayed after the end of the procedure. Set your personal program settings (directories, which to exclude or where to look specifically), and then click “Next” and work on the items in the resulting list, specify what to delete and what to leave.
The number and volume of duplicate copies found (as well as the type: music, video file, photo) are displayed at the bottom of the interface.
AllDup
AllDup is a powerful and free duplicate cleaner for your computer. A new, powerful search engine allows you to find items by the following criteria: name, extension, file content, modification date and file attributes. Fast scanning algorithm and method finds duplicates of any file type, text, pictures, videos or music.
AllDup functionality can:
- Search your hard drive.
- Search for similar images (not necessarily identical).
- Ignore EXIF (technical photo data) of JPEG and CR2 files.
- Create shortcuts or links to the last original file.
- Find takes with certain parameters specified by the user.
- You can scan many different folders, paths, disks, portable media, CD / DVD.
- Do not check tags for MP3 files (ID3).
- Save the results to a text document .TXT or to a table file .CSV.
- The user can use key combinations for more comfortable work with the program.
- Search inside packed data (archives), with extensions 7Z, ARJ, CAB, CB7, CBR, CBT, CBZ, EPUB, GZ, ISO, LZH, LHA, NRG, RAR, TAR and ZIP.
- Ignore metadata for FLAC audio documents.
Total commander
It is a very powerful and also the most stable file manager for Windows with a dual pane interface. The program is distributed shareware, with a license price of 2500 rubles with a trial period of 30 days.
The functionality, along with the set of tools on the panel, is quite extensive and with clear captions and descriptions for each element. Total Commander can open archives, as well as freely change their contents, as when working with a standard folder. A powerful search engine also works with the ability to customize search parameters to find files that must meet certain criteria.
The program is easily customizable for the user, the panels can be moved to where it is more convenient for you to be located, and the colors of buttons, elements, labels, panels and windows can also be personalized for any style.
The manager provides tools for working with copy files, that is, it can perform the function of searching for duplicate photos on a computer, or to identify other types of duplicate data. Just enter the required search attributes, and the program will automatically identify and provide a list of everything it finds during the analysis.
CloneSpy
This program can clean your computer from the same folders, files, music and other documents cluttering your hard drive that are completely identical to each other. CloneSpy is a free, portable (and installable) program for searching and removing duplicate Windows files.
If the function of moving files does not work (on the desktop and in other places it is impossible to move items, to interact with them in any way) when this program is running, try using this instruction:
- Open the Start menu, then search for Command Prompt. Run the found application as administrator.
- Enter the command: taskkill / f / im explorer.exe then start explorer.exe
- Check if the function has recovered. If not, then restart your PC.
We hope the article was helpful and you were able to get rid of a huge number of copies on your computer. Please leave your feedback or request using the comment form below.
