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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Double killer is also good.
i find duplicate finder is better!
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.
Hi Kristian,
I have tried it but still finds Duplicate Finder is better.
I use Directory Report
http://www.file-utilities.com
It can find duplicate files and duplicate directories
plus many other features