10 Best Tools to Search and Remove Duplicate Files

Updated on November 30th, 2012 by Quertime Team in Software

What’s the point of having few copies of the same files on your computer? These duplicate files are wasting spaces and they can be confusing. Some of you might think that hard drive’s space is not your concern as it’s getting cheaper per Gigabyte, but don’t you think that it’s good for us to clean up redundancies making our computer perform faster and better? For those who agree with me, below I’ve listed 10 really effective duplicate file detectors to trace for file duplication and list them out. They are all free for download and use, so just try one of them to get rid of your duplicate files now!

Duplicate Cleaner
Duplicate cleaner is a useful program to help you organize the contents of your home hard drive or corporate network. You’d be surprised just how many redundant or duplicate files you could find forgotten in an obscure documents folder. Duplicate Cleaner will deep scan for all types of files – photos, music, films/video, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, text files – you name it, if it appears twice on your computer then Duplicate Cleaner will find it. Once these files are found you are provided with helper tools to enable you to select which copies to delete or move. These files can be deleted to the recycle bin, moved into an archive elsewhere, or replaced with hardlinks.

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder
The program’s interface is simple and extremely easy to use. Users simply select the folders they want to search in, set the matching criteria and file types, and click the Scan button. The program displays a list of duplicate files, allowing users to select and delete those that are not needed.

Fast Duplicate File Finder
Fast Duplicate File Finder will help you find fast all duplicate files in a folder and its sub folders. The application will compare the content of your files so it will find duplicates even if they are using different file names. The Professional version can even find similar files regardless of their file types. It will analyze the content of the files in order to find similar files and not just file attributes like name and size as the standard duplicate file finders do.

Duplicate File Finder
Duplicate File Finder is a utility that identifies duplicate files in one or more paths. Unlike other utilities that only check file names, Duplicate File Finder performs a binary comparison of file contents and can locate files that are alike regardless of names. Its scanning can be defined by path, file mask, and with complex filters for size/date/attributes. Entire drive can be scanned or specific path. Results can be copied to the windows clipboard or saved to a tab delimited file.

CloneSpy
CloneSpy’s single-screen interface is so simple, most users will not have to look at the Help file for direction. With its actions clearly spelled out on screen, users will be checking their computers for duplicates in no time. Users select folders from a file tree. Once the folders are chosen, users can select a radio button to determine which pool of folders to compare, what to search for and what action to take when they are found.

Double Killer
Double Killer searches single or multiple directories for duplicate files by comparing any combination of file name, size, modification date and content. Using user-defined masks like *.mp3 or *.dll you can limit the scan to files that interest you or protect important files from being scanned.

Anti-Twin
Anti-Twin is a small software application which compares files, i.e. it searches for duplicate or similar files on your hard disk drive. All similar or identical files that were found can either be sent to the recycle bin or directly deleted. This will increase the hard disk space on your computer.

DupKiller
DupKiller is a fast and powerful tool for searching and removing duplicate or similar files on your computer. A lot of options allow to flexibly customizing the search.

Exact Duplicate Finder
Duplicate file finder is yet another option. It helps you remove identical files by using Byte-by-Byte file comparison that always gives the correct results.

AllDup
AllDup is yet another freeware tool for searching and removing file duplicates on your Windows computer. The fast search algorithm find duplicates of any file type, e.g., text, pictures, music or movies.