Duplicate File Finder Reviews

[Roshan Fried]

FastDuplicate File Finder won our BEST DUPLICATE FILE FINDER award. It is the fastest and the most feature-rich application of all that we have tested. The best part is that it has both FREE and commercial versions. Some features are not available in the free version but it is perfectly sufficient to perform a duplicate cleanup. Nevertheless, if you want to use the advanced features for finding similar files or filtering and exporting, you can always purchase a license. The Professional version is just $39.95 and you get a lifetime license that does not expire like the licenses of the other commercial tools. Read below why we have chosen this tool as the finest duplicate remover in our list.

The first and most important thing is the fact that this tool provides 100% accurate results. It was the only tool in our tests that never produced incorrect results. That is because it does not rely on simple CRC or MD5 checksums. It uses an optimized byte-to-byte comparison method which is both fast and reliable.

The similar files mode is something that you will not find in other applications. Computers are precise digital machines and finding similarities is not something that they can do out of the box. In order to find similarities, a tool should implement advanced analysis algorithms. The developers of Fast Duplicate File Finder have implemented really comprehensive similarity search algorithms as this tool can find even text documents that have rearranged paragraphs and altered sentences. None of the so-called fuzzy search tools that we tried could detect such files as similar.

The preview in FDFF is superior to any other tool that we have tested. It can preview ALL popular image formats (about 40) plus 300 RAW Photo image formats. It can also preview all audio and video files. Anything that you can play in Windows Media Player will be played in the application too. You can add support for extra audio and video files by simply installing codec files for them and they will be available in the application. The preview for PDF and EXCEL files is extremely handy. It makes comparing documents very easy. You do not need to double-click the files in order to open and view them in Word or Excel.

The tool comes pre-configured with protection for system files and folders. A setting in the application options comes enabled by default. If you feel brave you can always disable it which I really do not recommend. As an additional precaution, I strongly advise you not to scan any system folders for duplicates. These include the Documents and Settings, the Windows folder, the Program Files folder, and others. As I mentioned earlier some files in those folders are intentionally duplicated and deleting them may lead to issues with the system. The best practice is to scan only your own document folders for duplicates rather than scanning entire computers or drives.

This tool has both free and paid Professional versions. It is the best tool in our test and even the free version is sufficient to get the work done. If you like the tool you can support the developers with a one-time purchase of $39.95 and you will receive a lifetime license which unlike other popular tools does not expire.

This duplicate finder is the second-best on our list. I should mention though that it is not a general-purpose duplicate remover. It works only on images and can find similar and duplicate photos. The reason to place it second is its unique capability to find similar photos. As I already mentioned finding similar files is not something that common clone deleting tools can do. The previous tool that I reviewed can find similar files, but it is efficient for documents, archives, and text files. You can read in this article which duplicates file finder to choose for finding documents, photos, or audio.

VSDIF is the top application for finding similar and duplicate photos. It can find repeating pictures even if they are stored in different file formats. Edited, rotated, flipped, and converted photos are no issue and will be detected too. This tool is at the top of The Best Duplicate Photo Finder list. It is used by large corporations, medical research laboratories, and professional photographers.

No other duplicate photo finder tool provides this many features and this many supported image formats. Please note that if the format in which your photos are stored is not supported by a similarity search application it will not be able to detect them.

The built-in preview makes the process of reviewing the duplicates a breeze. It plays a track continuously from the same position while you navigate between the cloned songs. This way you can easily compare the quality of the files.

Of course, the tool can mark the files with the lower quality automatically in order to remove them easily. The bit rate and other information regarding the audio files is displayed in the duplicates list too.

Duplicate Photo Finder is another great dedicated duplicate finder for finding similar images. It can find duplicate images as well as similar photos in any image format. As I already noted, if you are looking to organize your images a dedicated duplicate photo finder is the best choice.

The tool supports multiple scan modes. It can find similar photos as well as identical images stored in different formats. It can search by file size and EXIF date. and can also find similar EXIF fields. For example, you can search for files with a similar EXIF description. Certainly, you can also find duplicate EXIF fields. If you search for example, for a duplicate CAMERA MODEL EXIF field the tool will list all the photos shot with a particular camera together.

In addition to the above, the tool can also find duplicate photos in Adobe Lightroom. This tool is way more advanced than any Adobe Lightroom duplicate finder plugin. It will let you choose a lightroom catalog and find all similar and duplicate photos in it. The common Lightroom duplicate finder plugins can not find similar images. They scan file attributes and in the best case some EXIF flags. In contrast, Duplicate Photo Finder can find both similar photos and similar EXIF info.

Duplicate Music Finder is another great entry in our list of the best duplicate file finders. It is a specialized duplicate remover tool that will find copied songs or similar audio files in your music collection. Duplicate songs are difficult to locate and remove manually. in addition to that, audio files are quite large and take up a lot of disk space. Therefore, keeping an organizing audio collection is a must. Having multiple copies of the same song in your playlist is quite annoying. It is equally annoying to have missing files and you might want to read our remove missing songs from iTunes article too.

Folder Size is not exactly a duplicate finder, but if you are trying to organize your disk and free up space, then it will probably be even more useful for you than a duplicate cleaner. The best part of all is that this great tool is free. It has a commercial version, but the features that you will need to clean up your drives are available in the free version.

As you can guess from the name, this tool will show all folder sizes on your computer. Folder sizes are not listed in Windows File Explorer and it is hard to spot the missing disk space. If you wonder why then read this article: Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

The tool will not only list the folder and file sizes, but it will also list the largest files and largest folders. It sorts the files and folders from largest to smallest and displays the disk space distribution using neat pie and bar charts.

This is a fantastic little tool that is really lightweight and does not use many resources. These are just a few of the major features of the tool. You can free up gigabytes of disk space using only the free version. If you have decided to organize your files then you should definitely try it. This is a tool that I personally use daily. I am sure that you will love it too.

Duplicate Finder is another free and robust duplicate cleaner application in our list of the top cloned file cleaners. It covers the most important points of our checklist for choosing clone removal apps.

The tool uses an optimized byte-to-byte comparison algorithm that provides accurate results. The user interface is simple and intuitive but also includes advanced features for more complex deduplication tasks. Windows 11 is not listed in the supported systems, but our test confirms that the tool is working flawlessly on that Windows version.

The free version is good enough to clean up duplicates, but the similarity modes are available only in the commercial version. Nevertheless, the options for cleaning exact copies are fully functional and are sufficient for most deduplication tasks.

As I already mentioned, the byte-to-byte and file size modes are available for free. The similarity search modes can find similar file names or similar documents. You can use them in the free version too, but they display only the first five groups of similar files. It is a kind of a teaser, but if you have fewer files you can still use the features.

Scanning for duplicates is simple and easy. Drag and drop the folders that you want to scan in the app, and hit the scan button. The tool will find exact copies by default. As soon as the search is finished the cloned files are listed in the main window. The repeating items are grouped together and details for every file are listed in a neat table.

You can easily review the results and also view every file in the preview panel below the duplicates list. Dupe Finder can preview images, music, video, PDF, Word, Excel, and many other file formats. Do not underestimate the preview capabilities of a tool. Having an instant preview saves a tremendous amount of time when reviewing the clones. You see the content of the files instantly rather than opening them with the application that supports that file format.

dupeGuru is a cross-platform (Linux, OS X, Windows) GUI tool to find duplicate files in a system. I usually do not recommend using cross-platform tools. That is because creating a cross-platform tool leads to a lot of compromises. It is like creating a car that can fly and be a submarine at the same time. You can understand that in the end, it will not do any of the three tasks well.

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