- Softonic Review
How to Find and Remove Duplicate Files.
Step 1
Click on Add Path link and add as many Folders / Drives as you like to scan for duplicate files.
Step 2
To search for predefined file types, press the combo button and select one of the options. (see visual below)
Select the appropriate file date range if you want to limit the search according to file age.
Select the appropriate file size range if you want to limit the search accorrding to file size. Skipping smaller files will improve search speed.
Step 3
Select the search engine which you want to use to locate duplicate files. Search Engine defines the means by which Duplicate Finder 2011 compares files to determine whether or not they duplicate one another.
Select the Byte by Byte Search Engine if you want to find 100% Duplicate Files - Recommended.
Step 4
Now click "Scan" button to start the search, the program starts to search for duplicate files. It can take some time, depending on your system and on the number of files in the selected folders. Also some searching algorithms are more time consuming than other. You can just minimize the program and let it run in the background.
When you have defined your search criteria and pressed the Scan button. The elapsed time and folder being searched is displayed on the status-bar (see visual below). On the status bar you can see how many folders have already been searched and how many duplicate files have been found. Of course, you can cancel the search by pressing the Cancel button or the Cancel button on the toolbar.
Step 5
After search is completed, you should review search result to verify if they are duplicates by previewing images, opening files and folders and view file properties.
This is the list of all duplicate files found using the search-criteria. You can view the list, export it to a text / xml / html formats. And, most importantly, you can select which files to process and either delete them or move them.
- The Preview Panel will display all images, mp3s, wma, video files in the selected group. To preview an image file, select it within the detail view and the image preview panel will display a thumbnail versions of it. Supported image preview file formats are: BMP, EMF, GIF, ICO, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF, Mp3, Mp4, WMA, WMV etc.
- You can easily resize the thumbnails by clicking on Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons.
Step 6
It is possible to review all the files and check duplicate files manually, but Duplicate Finder 2011 have "Easy Marking" option to mark all older versions of duplicate files. Select Easy Mark > Mark All Duplicates.
Mark All Duplicates - Selects all files except the latest ones in each Duplicate Group (based on the file modification time)
Mark Folders - e.g. if you've compared 2 folders and now want to delete duplicates from the second folder then just use this function to select required files.
Comment: the previous selected files remains still selected after using of this function.
Mark Folders and Sub-Folders - Similar to previous option but applicable to the branch of subdirectories.
Step 7
Duplicate Finder 2011 allows you to act upon marked duplicate files in a number of ways. Each of these functions is accessible either via the main application toolbar, or via the Results menu.
1) This function allows to Rename duplicate files by adding specified prefix or postfix to file names.
2) This function allows to Copy the duplicate files to specified folder.
3) This function allows to Move the duplicate files to specified folder.
4) This function allows to Delete the duplicate files. You can delete duplicates permanently or move them to Recycle Bin.
The output list includes both original files and duplicates! You need to be careful when you delete or move files.