DeadRinger

Working with a lot of pictures and multimedia files can risk filling your disk space with duplicate files. However, this is mostly the result of accidents, because you wouldn’t want to keep two of same files for no reason. Luckily, you can use specialized applications like DeadRinger in order to locate them and clean up your computer.

One thing you need to know is that the application is portable, which means you can store it on a USB flash drive to use on other computers as well. Registries remain intact, with a non-existent chance to mess up your PC. However, you do need to check whether or not .NET Framework is installed on your computer for everything to work out fine.

On the visual side of things, the application stores all of its features in a single interface, with no other menus or elements to confuse you. General input fields speak for themselves, with a browse dialog to add a folder to search in. Detected files are shown in a lish, with a preview of the duplicate being shown in a panel so you decide if it needs to go or not.

There are several algorithms type you can use to make the process more efficient. A drop-down menu lets you choose from Levenshtein Distance, Structural Similarity, Sift, as well as Mean Absolute or Squared errors. Moreover, you can set a threshold slider to specify sensitivity of the search process.

Depending on the threshold level and algorithm, as well as the size of the target disk, it can take some time for scan process to finish. However, results are generated in real time, so you can preview and manage files even before the scan is complete. When selected, you can view all variations and delete files at the press of a button.

Bottom line is that your computer can get clogged with various types of files, even duplicates, without you realizing. This is where applications like DeadRinger come in handy, providing the necessary means to effortlessly locate duplicate files, analyze them, and have them removed from your computer.