Download duplicate photos on your computer. Find and remove duplicate files in Windows with five free programs

21.10.2019

What a pity that hard drives are not rubber! I wanted to download a couple of movies for the weekend and install on a PC new game, but here's the annoyance - free place almost over. And you can’t free it, because only important and necessary things are stored on the disk.

Chin up! You can increase the amount of free space by 5-50% without the risk of losing valuable information. How? By deleting identical copies of documents, photographs, audio recordings, videos and other goodness, which accumulates several hundred in a year of computer operation. So, how to search and remove duplicate files in Windows

Unfortunately, the disk cleanup tool built into the system is not trained to look for identical copies of data, and we will have to turn our eyes to third party applications. In today's review - 5 free utilities that do this job quickly, clearly and cleanly.

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder

The only thing that declares a certain level of quality and claims the trust of users. The program supports all editions of Windows, is regularly updated, has a Russian language and is very easy to learn. To search for duplicates, it uses a special intelligent algorithm - it compares not only names, but also the internal contents of files, which guarantees high precision results.

Functions and Features of Auslogics Duplicate File Finder

Setting the filter by object type: all or only images, audio, video, archives and applications.
Exclude from search for files smaller and larger than the specified size.
Exclusion from the search criteria of names, dates of creation/modification of files and "hidden" attributes.
Finding duplicates with certain names or a given fragment in a name.
3 ways to delete duplicates: to the trash, permanently and by saving to the archive.
Restoring data from an archive.
Preview objects before deleting.
Support for custom exclusion lists from scanning files and folders.
Reverting the system to a restore point from the program interface.

Use Auslogics Duplicate File Finder easy and convenient. In addition, you can not be afraid that the program will destroy any data without your knowledge and the possibility of recovery (only if you yourself have not chosen the option to delete by the trash). The impression is spoiled only by an "unobtrusive" offer to install other products of the developer, which sometimes appears at startup.

CloneSpy

The utility is designed to search for duplicate files not only on the hard drive, but also on portable drives. It is slightly more difficult to use than Auslogics Duplicate File Finder, but more functional and able to work without installation on a computer - when starting the installer, the user can choose its standard or portable version.

Functions and features of CloneSpy

Support for any file types.
Search for duplicates by identical content or the same name in conjunction with another criterion - extension, name, size.
Finding objects of zero length.
Many options for operations with file copies: deletion manually or automatically (you can choose in advance which object to delete - new or old), placing it in a specific folder, creating a list of duplicates without deleting, and so on.
Any operations with found duplicates (including pending ones) using batch batch files.
Replacing deleted copies with shortcuts or hard links.
Calculation of checksums for the possibility of checking objects for identity.
Support for custom search filters.

CloneSpy functions quickly and smoothly, supports all versions of Windows, receives regular updates, but does not have a Russian language, which makes it somewhat difficult to master. In addition, some users are put off by the Windows 98-style interface.

Soft4Boost Dup File Finder

The developers of the utility took care not only about the functionality, but also about the beauty of their product: at your service are 11 stylish design options (skins). In addition, the application has been translated into 9 languages, including Russian, and has intuitive controls.

Soft4Boost Dup File Finder gets down to business right away - when you first start it, a wizard window opens in the background of the main window, which will guide you step by step through all the setup steps. You can't get confused and make a mistake.

Functions and Features of Soft4Boost Dup File Finder

Finding copies of objects by content.
Select a search category: among all files or only images, audio, video, archives or applications.
Option to ignore object names.
Scanning local and network folders, as well as removable media (you can select several).
2 ways to delete: to the trash and permanently.

Unlike many “free” applications that try to recoup their freeness by installing junk along the way or intrusive display of ads, Soft4Boost Dup File Finder only modestly offers to buy products from the same developer in bulk for 1399 rubles. If you don't need them, just don't click on the banner.

Like the rest of the programs of today's review, Soft4Boost Dup File Finder supports all versions of Windows and is regularly updated.

AllDup

The utility is not as intuitive as the previous one, but rich in features. Without the Russian language in it, not everyone could master all the possibilities in 5 minutes. Although there is nothing complicated in this program. At the first start, along with the main window, a small prompt opens - the window " Fast start” with three buttons: “Select source folder”, “Select search method” and “Start search”. Pressing these buttons in turn opens areas where you need to select or configure something.

Users who speak English can learn AllDup using the built-in help, which opens in right place by clicking on the question marks.

Features and functionality of AllDup

A large list of search criteria: name, extension, size, content, creation and modification dates, file attributes, hard links, similar images. Search by a combination of several criteria.
Scanning the contents of archives (finding individual duplicates in archives).
Customizable way to compare object names: by complete match, by initial characters in the name, by a specified number of matching characters, etc.
Finding files with similar names.
File content comparison.
Flexible search options with the ability to select additional actions before and after it.
Scan logging.
A highly customizable filter for ignoring objects.
Creating a hard link or shortcut to a saved file in place of a deleted duplicate.
No limits on the number of scanned directories.
Removable media scanning.
Preview of the found files with display of various options - in case of difficulty in making a decision to delete.
Compilation of convenient lists of search results. Export lists to txt or csv format.
Saving the scan result. Allows you to close the program without waiting for the end of the scan. And after a restart, start not from the beginning, but from the moment it stopped.
Create and save multiple settings profiles.

AllDup differs from many competitors by its high scanning speed and the completeness of detecting duplicated objects. By the way, thanks to the function of searching for similar files, the program can be used to find any data on the hard drive without deleting it.

Another nice feature of the AllDup utility is the complete absence of advertising. Instead, the button “Support the author” has been placed on the top panel with any acceptable amount, if you want it yourself.

DiskBoss

It cannot be fully attributed to the class of programs for removing duplicate files. This is just one of the functions, in addition to which the utility can do very, very much. DiskBoss is a disk space optimizer and advanced file manager. It is designed to analyze the use of drives and manage all the objects that are on them.

DiskBoss features and capabilities

Study of disk space with a pie chart displaying how much space is occupied by certain objects.
Classify, sort and group files and folders according to a variety of criteria, including user rules.
Finding and cleaning duplicates on workstations and servers running Windows. Flexible search criteria.
Several options for dealing with duplicates found - deletion, archiving, moving to another location, etc.
Replacing deleted duplicates with links.
Saving reports of scanning and cleaning disks from duplicate data in html, excel, pdf, txt, csv and xml formats.
Displaying the result of the search for duplicates on pie charts.
Creation and execution of automatic disk cleanup scripts.
Improved disk search system.
Synchronization of data in the specified directories.
Delete groups of files based on specified criteria.
Monitor changes in the disk file system in real time.
Integrity analysis and other operations with files.
Much more.

The DiskBoss utility will good choice for those who need a complete picture of the contents and status of disks, as well as the ability to manage all the data on them using manual and automatic methods. The application is available in free and several paid versions, with the first containing almost everything that is in the paid version. pro versions apart from a few automation tools.

Perhaps the only drawback of DiskBoss is the lack of a Russian language, but for the sake of such a wealth of functions, you can put up with it. Otherwise, the utility is very good, and for some tasks it is indispensable.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of programs designed to remove identical copies of files. There are dozens, maybe hundreds. However, this modest set is enough to satisfy the needs of 90% of Windows users. I hope that some of them will be useful to you as well.

Convenient and fast tool for music lovers

This simple tool will be useful, first of all, to music lovers who have a huge amount of musical compositions. Music files are usually small in size, but if there are several thousand of these files stored on a PC's hard drive, then duplicate music can take up a significant amount. Very often repeated audio files accumulate because different albums of the same artist contain several of the same songs, or because different music collections sometimes contain several of the same songs.

Search for duplicate music of any format

This application allows you to remove duplicates of almost all common audio formats (*.m4a; *.m4p; *.mp2; *.aac; *.aiff; *.ape; *.au; *.flac; *.mid; *.mp3 ; *.ogg; *.wav; *.wma; *.mp3pro; *.rm; *.ra, etc.), and the user has the ability to specify the format music files among which duplicates will be searched. For example, you can only search for duplicate songs in mp3 format, or only in m4p and mp3 format, and so on. The utility allows you to search not only for exactly the same duplicates of music, but also for similar musical compositions. To do this, the program provides a search for similar songs by music tags. In this case, it will search for duplicate songs with the same name, with the same artist or with the same album name. In this case, you can choose either one of these criteria, or several, for example, instruct the program to search for copies of songs by the same artist that have the same name.

Fast, free and efficient

If you are looking for the best free software to help you remove duplicate music, you can use Duplicate Music Remover Free. You can download this simple program from the link below the screenshot. You should not be afraid that this program will remove something you need without your knowledge. The utility removes only those files that you marked for deletion in the list of found duplicates. The main thing is not to forget to leave one copy of each composition from this list, because the program indicates in the report on found duplicates all instances of a file that has copies on disk. This software is suitable for use on computers with operating system Windows, including Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10.

To date, the technology for creating hard drives made a big step forward, offering users drives giant size- up to several thousand GB, among which hard drives with a capacity of 2 to 4 TB are most popular.

The only problem with such an abundance of free space on the computer for most users is the cessation of monitoring the amount of stored data and, as a result, the unexpected overflow of hard drives - in this case, only putting things in order in files and searching for duplicate files will help.

Thanks to the high speed of the Internet connection, downloading any files is no longer a problem and is commonplace. Based on this, HDD gradually filled with various content: video clips, films of various quality, photos, music, documents and other data. Over time, all these files become difficult to navigate, especially when the files are scattered in different folders with meaningless names.

It is not uncommon to store several copies of various files that the user may not even be aware of. It also happens that when editing photos in graphic editors, they save a backup copy of the original image without the user's knowledge - the ACDSee program can boast of this.

To prevent clutter among files and the accumulation of garbage on the hard drive, you need to take care of the structured storage of all data on the drive in advance, and you should also keep a list of stored files if you collect albums of artists, films of a certain genre, and much more. But if you have already come to the pun in the file system, we will tell you how to clean up the files on your computer.

There are many ways and strategies to organize the files on your computer. In turn, we will give one strategy, which, in our opinion, is the most optimal and effective. And in this, the first part, of publications on the topic of putting things in order in files, we will touch on the search for duplicate files.

WinDirStat.

Using the free program WinDirStat, you can easily find out and analyze which files take up the most disk space on your hard drive. This utility provides convenient statistics on the use of hard disk space by files of various types.

At the bottom of the program window is a kind of mosaic of multi-colored blocks. The color of each block depends on the type of files, and the size of the block depends on the amount of space taken up (the larger the block, the larger size files of this type).

In addition to viewing statistics in the WinDirStat program, you can delete large files that occupy a significant part of the disk space.

You can download WinDirStat for computers with operating system only. Windows system.

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.

The Auslogics Duplicate File Finder program will allow you to find duplicate files on any storage medium (for example, a hard drive, flash drive, memory card) and then get rid of them by deleting them directly from the program window.

The utility is able to find copies of files various types: audio, video, images, archives and executable files.

When searching for duplicate files, the program uses the MD5 algorithm, which allows you to find these very copies of files with different attributes (names, dates of creation, etc.).

Duplicate File Remover.

Duplicate File Remover is another program that is designed to find duplicate files of various types. In addition to searching, the program can delete, move or copy files to the selected category as you wish.

The algorithm used by Duplicate File Remover allows you to find duplicates of text documents, audio, video, images and other types of files with 100% accuracy.

The list of found copies can be sorted and exported to an HTML report.

Perhaps the only drawback of this utility is its shareware license, but, in any case, it is worth downloading Duplicate File Remover with a free trial period of 30 days.

In addition to the above programs for finding duplicate files, there are others.

For example, Anti-twin- uses the same byte-by-byte file comparison algorithm as the Duplicate File Remover program. Allows you to find copies of text documents, audio and video files, images and other types of files. Upon completion of the search and analysis of files, duplicates can be deleted directly from the program window.

Program VisiPics sharpened specifically for image search. Searches for photos by content, is able to find the same image with different resolutions. You can manually adjust the percentage of file matching.

In turn, the program similarity created specifically for finding copies of audio files by comparing the content of musical compositions.

Know that getting rid of duplicate files only has positive sides, namely: freeing up disk space from garbage, improving computer performance, speeding up file system defragmentation and reducing the time it takes to scan your computer for viruses.

Please note that these programs can be trusted, but not 100%. The program rarely, but may mistakenly consider a file that does not fit these conditions at all, which may be important to you, as a duplicate. With the right approach and careful use of programs for finding duplicate files, these useful utilities will become yours. good helpers in the general cleaning of the computer file system.

One of the most quick ways clog the hard drive - storage of duplicate files. Surely many are not even aware of their existence ... they may have different origin: random copies, many identical downloads, and so on. One thing is for sure - they can really create some problems for you.

A lot of duplicates are created because of the need to keep the file "safe" ... for example, before editing a document, I could make a copy just in case, and then forget it ... or I already have such a document, and I downloaded it again from the mail. Unfortunately, there can be a lot of such duplicates and it turns out that you fill up the free space with useless information.

With these tools, you can calculate and remove duplicate files in minutes and free up a lot of valuable hard drive space. I will only consider free utilities so you have nothing to lose!

Search for duplicate files. Overview of the best tools

This utility is probably my favorite tool for finding and removing duplicates, because it has a lot of great features: It is cross-platform, completely free, and also has an advanced labeling and selection algorithm.

What are non-clear duplicates? Several identical files may have different name. For example, you may have two files on your computer: example-file.avi and example file(1).avi- the utility understands this very well and can also mark them as a duplicate.

By the way, the utility also has other editions: Music Edition and Picture Edition, optimized for finding duplicates in graphic and audio files - even if they are recorded in different formats. This is very important, because it is audio and graphic files that most often become duplicates.

Duplicate Files Finder is an application that searches for duplicate files (which have the same content but not necessarily the same name) and allows the user to delete unnecessary files.

Duplicate Files Finder can only find exact duplicates. The principle of its work is to enumerate all the files on the computer by size and compare them by content. On the one hand, this is logical, but it is quite sad for video and graphics. (after all, depending on the compression algorithm, they can have different size) , but for everything else the program is just great.

Thanks to this comparison algorithm, Duplicate Files Finder is much faster than its competitors.

AllDup is powerful tools duplicate finder created by one person, Michael Thummerer. The utility has a number of settings for searching for duplicates from: file name, extension and data type, date of creation and modification, and many more different parameters.

AllDup has many useful features and great flexibility in terms of finding duplicates, but you have to pay for the functionality. The interface here is not at all friendly and this can drive an insecure user into a dead end. However, if you can figure out the program, then this application will be a good tool for finding duplicate files.

Duplicate Cleaner requires fine manual settings before you can use the functionality of this program to one hundred percent.

With manual configuration, you can choose in which folder you want to find duplicates, and not scan the entire computer, as some other programs offer us. As a result, you can delete these duplicates, move them all to a separate folder, or create shortcuts to the only necessary file instead. In general, the impressions are positive - so I recommend it.

If you are a Windows user and want to get rid of endless copies of images, then SimilarImages will be more than ever for you. Images are, in my opinion, the most common source of duplicate content on a computer. For example, I know that I have a bunch of duplicate photos in different folders ... and given their number, I have no desire to deal with them manually.

The program has flexible settings and can detect inaccurate duplicates - this is especially true due to the presence of artifacts that appeared during the image compression process.

The great thing about SimilarImages is that it shows you two images when it finds duplicates, and you can decide whether to keep them or remove the duplicate.

Conclusion

All as in real life When junk creates a terrible mess in your home, duplicate files can accumulate on your hard drive. Such files are very difficult to delete, because you forgot about it, and ordinary system cleaners will not find them - as they are legally found on the hard drive.

Use the programs that I have listed for you to find duplicate files to free up space on your hard drive. If you know about other utilities - share with us in the comments.

In contact with

Most programs for cleaning and Windows optimizations have built-in modules for finding and removing duplicates.

True, their effectiveness seems somewhat doubtful, since the search for duplicate files is performed not by their content, but by metadata.

Therefore, for these purposes it is better to use specialized utilities.

There are programs that search for duplicates only among text documents, there are programs designed to search for duplicates of photos, audio and even video. Today we would like to bring to your attention five applications whose main task is to find the same and similar images.

Dup Detector

A simple and effective utility for finding duplicate images. Supports JPG, BMP, PNG, TIF, PCX, TGA, WMF, EMF and PSP formats. Dup Detector features include pixel-by-pixel comparison of images within one or more galleries (folders). Distinctive feature program is the option to set the percentage range of matching when searching.

Of the shortcomings, the relatively slow speed of operation should be noted. In addition, when outputting results, the utility only shows two images at a time. Interface language - .

DupliFinder

A simple and convenient program for finding and removing duplicate photos and other images. The search is performed by comparing MD5 checksums. The rest of the program is similar to Dup Detector. It supports working with subdirectories, displaying the percentage of similarity, previewing the results of the comparison. Selected duplicates can be deleted. The disadvantages include somewhat slow speed, as well as the need to install the Java package. Interface language - English.

Similar Image Finder

Easy program to find the same and similar images in various formats. SimilarImages supports about 30 formats, including JPG, JPEG, BMP, PNG, ICO, CUR, as well as the lesser known RAS, PGX, WBMP, MNG, PCX, DCX, and a few others. It is possible to automatically and manually remove duplicates.

VisiPics

Another good tool for finding the same or similar pictures. Allows you to find images even with minor changes. Works with both individual directories and entire sections. It is possible to filter by degree of similarity. Supported formats are JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, TIFF, TGA, and RAW. The main disadvantage is a somewhat inconvenient user interface and the absence of the Russian language.

Image Comparer

Perhaps the best program for finding and removing duplicate images. Image Comparer has a convenient and simple interface in Russian, supports all popular graphic formats. The comparison is based on the content of the image itself, the so-called digital fingerprint. This indicates the degree of similarity in percent. Found duplicates can be moved, copied or deleted.