Duplicate files will constantly appear on your computer whether you like it or not. Sometimes it may even be from your fault. Anyway, the thing is that after a while, they become a pain in the neck as the searches you perform will take longer and the space on the hard disk will become thinner by the day.

Developers have foreseen this problem and created softwares that search for the duplicate files on your computer and erase them. It is a maintenance job they do and it may take a little longer the first time, but done regularly, it gets faster and faster.

The similar softwares I have analyzed by now had prices ranging between $29 and $35. Some would say that it is pretty much for a software that all that does is to perform a search and detect similar files. Well, I have a contradiction tendency at this one because if you take a look at the applications (Duplicate File Detective and Duplicate File Detector), you will see that the search is performed according to several criteria defined by the user.

As unusual as it may seem, I managed to find a similar in purpose application that is free and does almost the same job. Duplicate Free Edition is developed by Adaptive Technology and it is a simple to use software that was designed to find duplicates on your computer.

The WYSIWYG application has no complicated menu and the four administrative buttons available are in plain view. The interface is simple and the options are on the main application window. The only options Duplicate Free Edition offers are search related. There are three types of scans that can be performed with this utility. A very superficial one which searches only at the roots of your drives and it will not look deep enough inside your hard disk.

The second type of search is when you enable the Include Sub Folder function and the application will also look in the first subfolder of the directories in the root. This search is more comprehensive than the first one and it will also take longer to finish.

But the most comprehensive scan performed by Duplicate Free Edition is when Recursive All Folders option is activated together with Include Sub Folders. With this function enabled, the application will take a look at every file located on the drive. This scan will take the longest, but will find all the duplicate files on that drive.

After the scanning process is started, there are two interruptive options: Stop and Pause. Pausing the process can be resumed. Process Priority option lets you choose the amount of memory for the software to use. If you are in a hurry and you do not need too much memory for other applications, then Highest is the choice for you. In this mode, the software will take about 50MB of the computer memory. The range of memory feeding for the software goes from Lowest to Highest and the in between choices are Normal, Above and Below Normal.

Result window will display the original file in the left side and the duplicate in the right, while the Messages screen informs you about errors and hash failures. These are mainly because Duplicate Free Edition cannot gain access to some files because they are used by other applications.

The developer took care of the details and made users' work much easier by adding a context menu in the Result window. The options in here are extremely useful as they will allow you to open the selected file or check all the files for ulterior deletion. If the file is obsolete or is no longer needed, you can delete both originals and if you decide that keeping one of the files is best, then you can pick your choice by deleting whether the duplicates or the originals.


The Good

The software is easy to handle and does not require any skills to handle it. The file content scanning technique will provide good results as it will not perform a search for the files with the same name and size.

At opening the selected file, both duplicate and original will be launched.

The Properties screen in the context menu will give you the basic information about the file (name, size, location, attributes).

The Bad

I wish there were more search criteria with regard to the scanning process. Sometimes, the same file may have more than one duplicate and the software will display only one. So if you want to get rid of all the duplicate files, you will have to perform the scan again and again.

Maybe a Go To File option would be necessary besides the opening one, so that the user can make a comparison of the file by him/herself.

The Truth

I liked the application and being free, it made me like it even more. And even if it looks a little primitive with regard to its options, it is a good utility.

All the baddies can be fixed as the software is still young and has all the time to grow.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: