Find Duplicates

If you don’t properly look after your PC every now and then, it can easily become crowded with all kinds of files, and even duplicates can take up a considerable amount of space. Luckily, developers came out with applications like Find Duplicates in an attempt to help you quickly solve problems of such types, and save some disk space.

First of all, the application requires you to have Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package installed on your computer to work. This needs to be taken into account even when using it on other computers, since it doesn’t take you through a setup process, allowing you to carry it, and use it from a USB flash drive.

The visual design is pretty minimalistic, but this simplicity gives individuals of all levels of experience the chance to quickly get acquainted with the set of features. A large list gets filled with all detected items, with a smaller one where you get to add all target folders.

To start off, you need to specify one, or more locations for the application to perform the search operation. This can be done by dragging them over the main window, using the browse dialog, and there’s also an option to integrate it in the explorer context menu for even greater comfort.

The variety of filters you can apply leaves more to be desired, but this is only because of the lack of an option to just target a specific type of files. What you can do, on the other hand, is include subfolders, zero length files, hidden or system files, and to remove resulting empty folders.

It takes a little while for the application to finish scanning, with original, and duplicate files shown in groups, which can be easily differentiated through colors. Mark options allow you to have only duplicates selected, but you’re free to pick any file you want to continue the process.

Before taking action, there’s a built-in “What if” function, which lets you know how much disk space, and how many files remain in the case you choose to delete marked items. Removal is one option, but you can also choose to move duplicates to a different location.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Find Duplicates is an application you can rely on in order to free up some disk space by removing duplicate files from one, or more locations at a time. Although file filters are rather poor, detection time, removal simulation, and the general design make it worth a try.