Digital photographs can consume a lot of disk space in no time at all, so you’re wise to think about weeding out duplicates from time to time. While there’s no tool built in to Windows that can help, there are some able free and low-cost solutions available for download. What you want to look for in any duplicate file remover is the ability to search not only for duplicate file names but, more importantly, for duplicate contents.
Clone Cleaner Lite (
Heatsoft Clone Cleaner - Welcome) is a free program that will scan any drive or folder and present you with a list of duplicates. Once located, you can view the duplicates to make sure the program has not made a mistake, and then you can choose to delete the duplicates from within the application. A commercial Pro version of the software has a few more tricks up its sleeve, such as the ability to exclude certain subfolders from its search and the option to move rather than delete duplicates.
Duplicate File Sweeper (
Delete Duplicate using Duplicate File Sweeper. This software designed to delete duplicate files, delete duplicate songs, delete duplicate mp3, find and delete duplicate files, how to delete duplicate files, delete duplicate photos, duplicate file del) is another free duplicates finder that’s more rudimentary in operation but perhaps easier. You simply specify the drive or path that you wish to search, and click Start. Duplicates are presented in a tab, and you can then select some or all files to be deleted.
Duplicate file finders differentiate themselves largely by how many file types they can scan accurately and the options you have once duplicates are located. Well-known programs such as NoClone (
ReasonableNoClone 2007 - Find and remove true duplicate files, similar files and duplicate Outlook emails) and Duplicate File Remover (
http://www.duplicatefileremover.com) claim to be able to locate duplicates of any type and offer ways that you can recover deleted files if you find you’ve made a mistake when deleting something.