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 As for annoyance, consider that you have 50 duplicates and you want to decide for each file, what you get are 50 pop-ups, one after other, for each file. And for this reason Duplicate Cleaner is my No.1 program. Duplicate Cleaner has a very streamlined user interface divided into tabs. The scanning job sequentially progresses to the next tab. It also scans for files matching their CRC checksums. Scanning is very fast in comparison to Clone Spy. Scan results are shown as a list in the results tab, where you can select any file by looking at its name, size, date, location, or use ‘Selection Assistant’.
The Selection Assistant selects files of older date, smaller/greater size, having a specific string in file name or file path. It offers image preview of common image formats, and has a music search mode which can involve bit rate and size. It can also create hard links of the deleted duplicate files to the single file which you opt to keep. Hard linked files behave like any standard files, but are cross linked to one single file. Read further details about Hard Links before using this option.
 CloneSpy is the one of the oldest programs in its class. It's certainly not the fastest, but it's definitely the smartest. You can specifically select what is to be scanned and this can include multiple drives, multiple folders, or just individual folders. It has the ability to detect duplicates by CRC, by file name, by CRC and file name, and by file name and size. It will also detect zero length files. The program does not need to be installed but can be run from the executable so it's a good candidate for your USB Flash drive toolkit. It also throws up duplicates in a way that at least makes you think about what you are deleting. Click-happy users may find this latter feature an annoyance; to me it's a safety feature.
 Easy Duplicate Finder is another option. It is a little more generic than Duplicate Finder with a simple user interface. Does not have image previews, dedicated music search, Selection assistant, Hard Link creator like Duplicate Finder. For its standard job i.e. finding duplicates, it is really easy to use, search process is speedy, system files can be excluded. It's also more recently developed than both the above. Please read the help file and use with care. In particular do NOT include your Windows folder in your scan unless you are a knowledgeable user.
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Great stuff, surfing on the net for few minutes then I found this website thru bing.com
Try these tools:
Find Duplicate Files
Find and remove duplicate files, duplicate images and duplicate mp3 files performing file(content) analysis.
Thanks for the find! Will add to the list in a few days, having fun playing with them at this time.
Duplicate Cleaner 1.4 has just been released - it now uses MD5 hashing rather than CRC32 so it's more accurate. It has a host of other tweaks as well.
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/duplicate-cleaner
As long as it is open source I keep supporting, Great work. Our knowledge belong to the world.
Farmasi (commercial link removed by site moderator)
You can try this FREE tool that was recently featured on PCMagazine and ZDNet:
http://www.mindgems.com/products/Fast-Duplicate-File-Finder/Fast-Duplica... - Fast Duplicate File Finder
Fast Duplicate File Finder will help you find fast all duplicate files in a folder and its sub folders.
The applications will compare the content of your files so it will find duplicates even if they are using different file names.
It uses fast binary comparison algorithm and has internal preview supporting a lot of image, video, music and text file formats.
Hi Dave, This is Zeeshan (munkasir) previous category editor.
Need to correct one thing about Clone Spy which was left unchecked by me. By default it throughs results one by one as it finds them but it can be configured to submit aggregate report at the end of the scan.
Now Clonespy has also incorporated creation of Hard links.
I haven't checked it but I suggest it for important jobs due to its strong platform. Moreover, its updated quite frequently.
Thanks to the guy at Digital Volcano for he had started updating its software after a long time. Current version is 1.3.1. I myself use both Clonespy and Duplicate Cleaner.Though I find Duplicate Cleaner easy to work with due to its design and not to forget, its selection assistant is yet to be competed in freeware.
Thanks
Zeeshan,
Thanks for the update. Sorry for the slow reply. I am very happy with both Clonespy and Duplicate Cleaner and haven't found anything better.
Dave
Could anyone say whether these freeware apps are on a par with--or superior to--the commercial de-dupe apps like Delete Duplicate Files and others?
Your first choice includes "smaller/greater size" which I do not think is really a clone, is it? I thought a true clone is an exact copy of every detail (for example a sheep and its clone identical inlcuding having the identical DNA markers) which I thought required a byte-by-byte comparison.
I am looking for software that will identify true, exact content duplicates, regardless of name or date, primarily for use with photographs. Will any of these do that or do I need to look for another option? If these cannot identify only actual clones, what software would you recommend? An additional advantage with a byte-by-byte comparison option might be that with RAW files or those created with specialized software, the analysis software does not need to translate the file, just be able to read it.
Duplicate Cleaner 1.3 will find exact content duplicates.
Simply specify the folders you wish to search, add that path
and then in the File Search check boxes, check only Same Content (CRC)
I tried Easy Cleaner (ToniArts), Duplicate Finder v3.5.3, Duplicate File Finder (Brook Younce), Duplicate File Finder (Funduc), Duplicate Finder (Ashisoft), and they all have the same problem, when the file count gets high, they all crash. I tried many other explorer tools (Fileboss) but they were too cumbersome for my duplicate search requirements.
Duplicate Finder v3.5.3 was fast, but crashed, ran out of memory.
Duplicate File Finder (Brook Younce) has no output to file or printer.
Duplicate File Finder (Funduc), good, fast, great output, but choked after 75k files.
Duplicate Finder (Ashisoft), slow, good search selection, limited files
Only Folder Match (Salty Brine Software) could handle 100k plus files, quite fast, but limited output to text file or csv.
I really pushed these looking for a candidate, I was searching large server drives, and this was my result:
SEARCH SUMMARY:
Number Of Duplicates Found: 91437
Number Of Duplicate Groups: 22133
Total Size: 53.74GB
DoubleKiller is the most usefull of these apps for the typical (non-tech) user.
Yep - I recommend this as well to some of my inexperienced clients.
Sure, me too.
Me too, but have problem to have it work on vista. Also need manually set link file on desktop.
Yes me too problem with visa, but not just for that, many kinds of problems with visa. - John
Heatsoft Clone Cleaner Lite for the best, duplicate file finder for the easiest to use.
i use duplicate finder to find and remove duplicate files from my office system. it really help me a lot in cleaning it.
But it's not freeware, is it?
peter
I also use Easy duplicate file finder to search clones.
Also the Duplicate mp3 finder is best for finding duplicate music and Dup detector for finding picture clones.
I think you are right!
Has you considered Dupemerge?
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/dupemerge/dupemerge.html
It will only find duplicates inside the same NTFS partition -- but, on the other hand, it will convert them into NTFS hardlinks. The end result is that you free space on the disk without having to choose which filename/folder to keep.
Some more:
Duplicate File Finder 1.1.0.3 - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/Duplicate-File-Finde...
DupKiller 0.8.2 - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/DupKiller.shtml
WinDeDup 2.4 - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/WinDeDup.shtml
Duplicate File Finder 3.3 - http://www.softpedia.com/get/File-managers/Duplicate-File-Finder-Brooks....
LookDisk 2.97 - http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/LookDisk.shtml
I have not yet found a duplicate finder that will correctly identify large duplicate files. I suspect most of these tools use 32 bit integers for the file size.
Doublekiller doesn't find them.
Duplicate Cleaner hangs on my system (maybe it was needlessly computing CRC, I don't know, but it didn't respond to cancel)
Easy Duplicate Finder - seemed to hang, but did respond to cancel.
BTW - the file I was comparing was over 2^31 bytes.
That's strange, most dup detectors in this article use CRC to detect dup's. Can't see how they are failing on you, I used to use Clonespy and later - because of OS compatibility - Jv16 or EDC. They work for me, renamed files with same CRC are flagged. Is your scan finishing ? I've seen some programs having problems while calculating CRC for very large files (like yours). Try copy with Windows only, rename the file (if you want) and then scan the folder.
Forgot to add how I was able to check if they were duplicates.
Used TeraCopy, renamed one file to be the same as the other. Selected one file, and then did Copy To the other files folder - did Skip (because the file already existed), and then pushed the Test button, which computes CRC for both Source and Target files.
Easy Duplicate File Finder is really good. It supports Unicode filenames.
Yep, for duplicate files and music, duplicate cleaner is my fave.
The selection assistant is particularly handy.
I second Duplicate Cleaner. It rocks :)
I would recommend NoClone 2007 Free Edition. I normally use it to scan my duplicate mp3s and it works perfectly. It supports Windows 9x/Me/NT4/XP/2000/Server 2003/Vista . I highly recommend this one to be added to the category.
http://noclone.net/
I wasn't aware this was free.
Can you provide a download link to the free version?
It's limited to 100,000 files. Download link and edition comparison: http://download.noclone.net/
Not exactly the same thing, but on a related note is VisiPics
http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Main_Page
VisiPics (as it's name would suggest) finds duplicate pictures on your computer, even when they are not exactly the same. You can make it detect pictures with more difference by setting it to a loose filter or make it only look for photos that are almost exactly identical by setting the filter to strict. It is great, especially if you constantly save pictures to your hard drive and don't have that great of a memory on if you have or have not saved a picture before.
Thanks a Lot Dude.
I never expected that I will find Duplicate Photo Finder with such less effort.
Sorting things in Google is difficult sometimes.
This site has been very useful for all my needs.
I agree. This is a very good utility.
www.funduc.com/dupfiles.htm
brooksyounce.byethost13.com/soft/dupfinder.htm
Only one weak point - not unicode. Otherwise it's an excellent product.
Niefer ;)
If one wishes to compare what changes have been made
between two revisions of the same file, folder or archived
folder (including subfolders) [eg. you have an older backup
of a folder and you would like to compare this with the newer
folder], then csDiff is the tool you need.
- Bharat Kurve
Hi Bharat
csDiff is indeed a very good and a kind of unique program. I thought of using it as dup detector but it seems far fetched, as there are many good software available for the job. But it certainly does not under mines the importance of the software itself as it is really quite unique for its specific task and I for myself can definitely use something like this.
Thanks for sharing.
Zeehsan
recently I needed to eliminate hundreds of duplicate mp3s {a friend panicked when on a system message and merged iTunes music...eh}
I tested several duplicite finders and found these critical features to make a difference.
-level of combinations by which to compare files [date, size, name, checksum]
-level of options to specify exclude/include directories
-visual presentation of the results after a scan...
...-speed and ability to work with the results-list of duplicates after a scan (sorting, mask-selecting...)
-an option to save/remember the results-list
and then just little things: I remember someone complained a program failed to see a difference between VOB files and reported them as duplicates...
http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/
is my own fave, and it supports vista
doublekiller is another contender worthy of mention.
http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller/
It is an interesting message. I have a question. Now I use Clone Remover to find images and music files duplicates What are the differences in these two programmes and how can I use the one from this article? Thank you.
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