The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Duplicate file finder/eraser

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by gino_lee, Jul 18, 2009.

  1. gino_lee

    gino_lee Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    344
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Does anybody know of a good simple and FREE program that will help me find and delete duplicate files?

    I am using Easy Duplicate Finder, but I need to select each individual file I want to delete, and that takes forever because I am trying to get rid of the multiple copies of photos I have on backups.

    Is there a program out there that just says, D Drive has the original files, and F Drive is the one containing the duplicates. However, there are some originals on F Drive, so I can't just go and delete the whole directory where my pictures are.

    To make things worse, my drive crashed once, so I used a program to dump all my things on the backup drive, so the backup drive has up to 3 copies of certain files!

    What a mess!
    TIA!
     
  2. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

    Reputations:
    836
    Messages:
    3,682
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
  3. gino_lee

    gino_lee Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    344
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Ah, thats a decent little program. thnx.

    However, it does not let me state that the files in D Drive are the originals. Although, its a little bit easier to look at the results and choose files to delete from.

    any other suggestions? I've tried Moleskin Clone Remover because it seems to have the feature I want, but I just can't get it to choose a specific folder, it will only allow me to choose whole drive letters..
     
  4. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

    Reputations:
    836
    Messages:
    3,682
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
  5. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

    Reputations:
    836
    Messages:
    3,682
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
  6. bjcadstuff

    bjcadstuff Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    54
    Messages:
    276
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I used duplicate cleaner. Unfortunately if you have duplicate files in multiple locations, there is no way to determine which one is the original and which one is the duplicate. By definition they are equal and only you can decide which one you feel is the original and which one is the duplicate.

    I spent a lot of time cleaning up my hard drive after years of buildup. I did go through several iterations and went through the files one by one to determine what to delete.
     
  7. gino_lee

    gino_lee Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    344
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    THAT my friend is painful. I am feeling your pain now!

    maybe I'll give that open source program a try, been trying a couple programs yesterday to see which one makes things easier.
     
  8. Thinker2

    Thinker2 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Try this one - Duplicate Checker. For free you can check about 5000 files for each search run. I hope it will be enough)
     
  9. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    801
    Messages:
    3,881
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    google must be down this weekend