How To Delete Duplicate Files On Windows 10

[Cristoforo Kanoy]

Duplicatefiles occupy unnecessary space in your computer hence slowing it down. These files are copies of already existing files on your device. You may have file duplicates of photos, videos, audios, archives, documents, etc.

The best way to deal with such files is to trace and remove them from wherever they are on your computer. There exist a couple of techniques and strategies to remove duplicate files on Windows 10. This article will discuss 3 ways, including the following:

This may create space to store more data and speed up your computer in the long run. The standard built-in tools to remove duplicate files on Windows 10 include File Explorer and Windows PowerShell. Below are steps to use each of these tools.

4. The above process will take some time to complete (depending on the number of files in the search folder). When it finishes, open the results file (.txt file) to identify the location of the duplicate files and manually delete them.

Using third-party software to remove duplicate files on Windows 10 is a great alternative to inbuilt tools. Third-party software is quite effective and efficient in removing all the duplicate files on your computer.

Step 1. Open EaseUS Dupfiles Cleaner and click Scan Now to start cleaning. EaseUS Dupfiles Cleaner will automatically select all data in all partitions. You can delete partitions you don't want to clean up by pressing the "-" sign in Scan Folders and choose the file types in Filename Pattern.

* You can click Smart Selections to further check which type of files you need to clean up and if you cannot identify the content from the file name, you can directly click the file name in the upper right corner to preview it.

Windows Explorer helps you manually view different forms of data stored on your computer. The views exist in the form of "Extra Large Icons," "Large Icons," "Medium Icons," "Small Icons," "List," "Details," "Tiles," and "Content."

This method works well for you if you already know the names of the duplicate files. You'll only need to open the drive and type the file's name on the search bar. You can also search for the known files using their respective extensions, i.e., .jpg, .mp3, .pdf, etc.

You can remove duplicate files on your Windows 10 computer by using built-in tools, third-party software, or manually. Common built-in tools to delete duplicate files include File Explorer and Windows PowerShell. The best third-party software to delete duplicate files is EaseUS DupFiles Cleaner.

This software automatically searches all files on your computer to identify duplicates. To manually delete duplicate files in your Windows 10 computer, you can use Windows Views, Windows Search, or sorting files. Among the three methods, EaseUS DupFiles Cleaner is the most preferred.

I've found a lot of duplicates but many are slightly different at the end of the file paths, but they may be the same size and have the same name. I've attached a snippet. How do I know if I can delete any of the duplicates since I have so many? As you can see, many duplicate files end in "_1". Can they be deleted?

I would strongly advise against searching for or even deleting duplicate files in the system folders, such as "Program Files" or "Windows". Many programs and also Windows unfortunately have the habit of creating files multiple times, however, in the vast majority of cases deleting these files leads to damage, so that a repair or reinstallation becomes necessary.

But when all is said and done only you can decide which files you want to keep and which you don't.

Nobody else can make that decision for you, and certainly an application can't decide it for you.

Taking note of the above I would suggest that setting the 'Match by', Ignore', and 'Include' similar to these screenshots is the safest (best) way to search for your own duplicates, you may want to 'add' more paths to search.

This first will search only user Steve's Documents, Downloads, and Pictures folders and report only any exact duplicates found there whatever they are named.

An alternative would be to do it like this and tell it to search all the sub-folders in 'Steve', this is of course searching more folders and so is likely to find more duplicates which may not be the ones you are looking for:

After searching you can output a list of what has been found to a textfile if you want to check them out further before deciding if you want to delete them or not.

You cannot import that textfile back into duplicate finder, things may have changed since you made that textfile so a new scan is needed each time you use duplicate finder.

Once you have decided which, if any, files to delete then you can use the tickboxes to delete one (or more) of the duplicates.

When using the tickboxes then you have to select them one by one, there is no 'Delete All' button - that would be just too dangerous and you could very easily delete (hundreds of) things that you want or need.

I have this exact same problem. CCleaner doesnt delete any of the duplicates, but if I go to the folders and delete them individually they delete fine. also it would be nice if there were filters so a large number could be deleted at once, because I have many thousands of duplicates.

I too am having similar issues. I can delete them fine from Windows Explorer without a problem, I have checked the File Name and Path and there are no unusual characters, its not too long or anything like that. Tried renaming files and folder, but this did not solve, even moved them to a different physical disk but no luck.

Is there any anti-virus/anti-malware that's been configured to pro-actively protect those folder locations? Remember Windows 10 added the feature to protect certain folders, and some other anti-virus/anti-malware tools also have that ability if configured to do so.

The short is, the folder and contents can't be compressed with windows. To find out open the properties menu with Right click > Properties and find the option on either the Properties > General tab or by clicking Advanced button found at the bottom of the General tab.

You might want to consider implementing it on the new file server as well if it is Windows Server based, since it allows you to filter file types and assign quotas to folders, which will make the management of content in shares much easier and adds another layer of defense to your server if implemented properly. Adding a SMTP server to the configuration allows you to send explanatory mails when users try to copy unauthorized files to the protected share, near their quota limit and it can send scheduled reports to you regarding usage as well.

You can assign a file policy to the root folder where the share(s) reside on (monitoring only, no need to enforce it) and once it has had a chance to run you will be able to pull reports for large files, duplicate files, files with a specific extension, files by modify date (for unused files) and so forth.

FSRM seems like a great idea to help keep it from become what it is now again, so that will absolutely be setup on the new server. Part of the removing duplicate files is to trim down the extraneous data before I move it both for the time, space, and sanity savings. I do have some cooperation from other departments to slim down and organize a bit, but in the end it will probably be a lot of unilateral decisions on my part.

The Duplicate File Finder is an excellent tool in Auslogics BoostSpeed. Its purpose is to help you search specific folders or the entire computer for duplicate photos and delete them automatically.

There are numerous duplicate cleaner software you can use, such as CCleaner, Wise Duplicate Finder, Duplicate File Fixer, etc. But we recommend Auslogics Duplicate File Finder since many users have testified of its incredible features. Also, this fast duplicate file finder provides fast scanning algorithms, flexible search settings, and reliable duplicate file deletion alternatives.

Yes. You can safely delete duplicates. Keeping many copies of the same file on your computer is wasteful. However, you should take caution when deleting the files. So before erasing any files, double-check that they are indeed duplicates and not needed by any running programs or system functions.

You can use duplicate file finder software to locate identical files across many directories. Most of these programs let you choose many locations to scan at once. Such applications include Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.

Run a search of titles and use wildcard symbol * which will pull up all titles in the binder and can if look at Project Search options even choose to include files currently in the trash.

Now at bottom of Project Search options is the ability to save and name this search as a collection (Dynamic). For example you could name it the binder list.

Dynamic collections have a title bar and below are the options for how to sort your collection including alphabetical order so that duplicates with the identical titles would be adjacent as went thru the list.

If pick after looking at files which ones you want to delete can use the CTRL key and select files.

If right click on these can choose reveal in the Binder, then these selected files from your collection will be highlighted in the Binder.

Now right click on a highlighted file and choose move to the trash.

This should allow you to find widely spaced duplicates and select files you wish to delete. Caution do not empty the trash till you see how your story looks to make sure you are not trashing the wrong duplicate.

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Typically one can delete duplicate files on the My Cloud the same way they do on their computer. Use an application/software that searches the drive(s)/folders you designate and display any duplicate files/folders found.

What My Cloud unit do you have? The single bay/single drive My Cloud units (the general subject of this subforum) do not officially support third party apps being installed like the multi-bay My Cloud units do.

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