Remove duplicate files to free up disk space

Posted on July 19, 2008 at 5:34 am

Looking for a duplicate file remover? My desktop is messy. Not just standard-messy, but overflowing out of the sides messy. So, I made a little resolution to myself, to clean up and organize my whole computer. The only problem is that I’m hooked up to several hard drives, and it’s hard to tell what files I have, and how many copies of a certain file I have. So, as you can probably see, it’s a tedious task for me to organize my computer.

Even if I put all of my music on one of my external hard drives, all of my programs on another, games on yet another, etc, etc, I’ll still have many duplicate files.

Instead of taking the time and effort of deleting every single duplicate file, one by one, I typed in “remove duplicate files” into Google. I found some programs, but I’ll share the good ones with everyone here today, to save you time.

Method 1: Duplicate File Finder

This program is very easy to use and I recommend it to anyone who is not familiar with computer terms. Just click ‘Start Search’, and my hard drives were all scanned for me, handily enough. The actual method this program uses is comparison of raw binary data. To scan around 600GB, it took only 15 minutes, which was fairly quick in my opinion. The only think that bothered me about this program was the inability to exclude folders/files to be scanned.

Method 2: Heatsoft Clone Cleaner Lite

This method is also pretty simple to use. There’s nothing to change really, just click ‘Search’ and you’re pretty much set. This program took 12 minutes to scan, which was faster than the last. My main annoyance with this program was it’s constant promotion of the ‘Pro’ Version of this program, which costs actual money. But on the bright side, it has a ‘Tab’ function that allows you to view duplicates of the Same Size, Same Name and so on.

Method 3: Easy Duplicate Finder

This one was probably my least favorite out of all the programs listed, but it still makes for a good alternative if the other two won’t work for you. It also uses the method of raw binary comparison, which is probably the best way to remove duplicates.

It was really fast, only taking around 8 minutes for it to scan all 600GB, but there was no way to delete all the duplicates in one click, and you have to click each and every single duplicate to mark it up for deletion, which is going to take me an awfully long time.

So there it is, a few good ways to remove duplicate files, which is handy if you want to clean up your computer, or even if you just want to free up some hard drive space. Also, by freeing up your hard drive, your computer should run faster, and improve it’s performance.

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10 Responses to “Remove duplicate files to free up disk space”

aamir said on : July 19th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Double killer is also good.

Joe said on : July 20th, 2008 at 6:10 am

i find duplicate finder is better!

Kristian said on : July 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 am

Another program that lets you remove duplicate files is Clone Tools. It can be dowloaded from http://www.pilotman.com

Clone Tools works with folders containing duplictae files instead of just a long list of all duplicate files as in most (or all?) other duplicate file finders. I think this gives you a better overview of your duplicate content.

Joe said on : July 23rd, 2008 at 7:24 am

Hi Kristian,

I have tried it but still finds Duplicate Finder is better.

Allan said on : October 15th, 2008 at 7:46 am

I use Directory Report
http://www.file-utilities.com

It can find duplicate files and duplicate directories
plus many other features

Trisha said on : November 19th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

This is tool is excellent for a puter dunce like me. Thank you for the link.

Laverne Barton said on : January 8th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

I am 71 years old and I have been looking at my digital photos.. and find that I have numerous copies of my pictures… can you please tell me what to do to delete the duplicates and yet not lose any of my originals?
Thank you.. for helping an old lady learn something new and prove that I am not senile.. Respectfully, Laverne Barton

Ashi said on : January 21st, 2009 at 9:45 am

Dear Laverne Barton,

Here are the steps to find and delete duplicate files.

Step 1: Download Duplicate Finder (Link Below)

Link : http://www.ashisoft.com/downloads/dfsetup.zip

Download Duplicate Finder to a known location. Run setup and follow on-screen instructions to install the application.

Step 2: Launch the program.

Step 2: Add locations where want to look for duplicate files.
You can add paths with criteria e.g. Include sub-folder, file types, file sizes and date range.

Step 3: Select the Search Engine.
Select the Search Engine e.g. Byte by Byte, CRC32, Same File Names, and Zero Size.

Click “Scan” button to start the search.

Now the program starts searching. It can take some time, depending on your system and on the number of files in the selected folders. Also some searching algorithms are more time consuming than other. You can just minimize the program and let it run in the background.

Step 4: Review Searched Result.
After search is completed, you should review search result to verify if they are duplicates by previewing images, opening files and folders and view file properties.

Step 5: Mark the files you want to Delete / Move / Copy
It is possible to review all the files and check duplicates manually, but Duplicates Finder is also able to remove duplicates automatically. You can click the corresponding button to do this.

By default, the Duplicate Finder move files to the Recycle Bin. This way, you can easily restore them, if something useful is deleted. Let a few days pass before emptying your Recycle Bin. Until then the space will not be recovered, but there’s a better chance that you will find out if something is missing.

Carmen Sanchez said on : February 19th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

Question: How you know which ones to delete : like dlls or exe or other files that the computer system uses without damaging the system??

Frank said on : February 22nd, 2009 at 9:20 pm

I’m just like most, out here testing for a duplicate file finder that best fits my needs. I found that your evaluation of Easy Duplicate Finder had a major inaccuracy. Selections can be made to effect all the duplicate sets in the list quickly and easily. A context menu will appear by right clicking anywhere on the header row of the list.(or even on any file in the list). Two examples of options are: “select all but the oldest duplicate, or all but the newest in each group”. And there are many other useful options as well.