With today’s extra-large hard drives, many people tend not to be too worried about running out of disk space on their computer. But this can lead to having duplicate files and folders on your computer which can be hard to sort out. You may also be in a situation where you have a backup drive or hard drive from another computer that has similar files on it, and you want to do remove these duplicates to get your space back.
Watch Video: How to Find Duplicate Files and then Instantly Copy, Move or Delete Them.
Unfortunately, Windows does not come with a built in method to find duplicate files but there are third party apps out there that can. In this article, we will be showing you how to find duplicate files and then instantly copy, move or delete them.
The program we are going to be using to find these duplicate files is called Fast Duplicate File Finder. They have two versions of the app that you can use. There is a free version that will let you find duplicates and then copy, move or delete them Then there is a Pro version with extra features such as the ability to find files with similar names or attributes as well as the ability to export the results to an XML or CSV report.
Once you download and install the app, you will see that there are several configuration options that can be set for your scans. If you come across a feature that is not supported in the free version, you will be asked to upgrade to use that feature but for basic duplicate file tasks, the free versions should work just fine.
To begin the duplicate file search process, click on the Add Folder button to add the folders you want to compare.
You will then be able to browse the folders on your computer and check the ones you want to add to the program to be analyzed.
Once you have your folders loaded, simply click on the Start Scan button at the lower right and when the scan is complete, you will be shown a summary of how many duplicate groups and files it found.
You will then see these duplicate groups and files shown in the main screen of the program. The groups are duplicate files that have matching attributes and are grouped together so you can compare them. If you look at lines 11 through 13, you will see that there are three files in the group that match even though they all don’t have the same name.
At the bottom right of the program you will see some scan options with the default being 100% equal files. There are also options for similar files, similar file names and file size. When you choose one of these other options, you can change the similarity percentage as needed.
Before taking any actions on your duplicate files, you will need to check the files you want to act on. At the bottom left, you have several options you can take on the checked files.
The Autocheck files with option will automatically check files based on the selection you choose. The default is to check files with older file dates.
Once you have selected your files, you can then choose an action to the left of the Perform button. The default option is Delete checked files to the Recycle Bin.
If you want to copy or move the files instead of deleting them, you can choose one of the other options and then select a folder to copy or move the files to in the destination folder box.
Clicking on the Advanced button will show you options you can configure for file exclusions. The professional version will allow you to use the filter tool to really fine tune the duplicate finding process.
Once you have your options configured, you can then click on the Perform button to have the configured action taken on your files. You will then be shown a confirmation message telling you what action is going to be taken on the selected files.
There is an option section that you can go to if you want to configure some of the other settings of the Fast Duplicate File Finder app. You can also change which columns are displayed within the interface.
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