Everybody has a digital camera these days and they are taking pictures non-stop. Sometimes we forget if we had copied the pictured from the camera to our hard disk and copy them once again. This results in multiple duplicate copies of images on our hard disk. It not only wastes the disk space, but also makes it very confusing for us to deal with duplicate files. Once a person I know, actually printed all the pictures in his vacation pictures folder, only to realize that he had printed them twice because of the duplicate images. The freeware tool Duplicate Finder can help you detect and remove the duplicate images in your hard disk.
Here are some of the features of the free Duplicate Finder :
- Can search using multiple methods (byte by byte, file hashes, similar names etc.)
- Supports removable devices like iPod, iPhone, Zune, Zip, PSP, Mp4, Flash Drives, Mp3 Players, etc.
- Can search multiple locations on local PC and over network.
- Allows exclusion of important folders.
- Results can be exported in HTML and CSV formats.
You can download Duplicate Finder from the Ashisoft website. The download is available in form of a setup installer. The downloaded file is of around 1 megabytes in size. After the installation is over, it automatically launches the program. The first thing that you should do is add a location to search for duplicate files. You can do this by clicking on the Add Path button.
You can add a local folder or a network location to the search path. You can add multiple locations if you want to. Once you have added a location to search for, choose the search method. You can choose from byte-by-byte, same file names, unique files etc. Finally click on the Start Search button in the toolbar for searching through the selected locations.
It is very quick to search and takes only a few seconds. After the search is completed, it would show a message about how many duplicate files have been found and how much space can be freed up by deleting one copy from the duplicates. You can dismiss the message by clicking on the OK button.
The duplicate files are grouped in the list with alternate colors of light blue and white. You can see their modified date, size and location in the list. A preview of both the files is also shown in the top panel. Double-clicking on a file in the list would open it in your default image viewer program, so that you can have a better look at it. You can select all those files that you want to remove. You can also use the Easy Marking feature in the toolbar for quickly selecting one of the duplicate files in each duplicate group in the list.
After the selection, Duplicate Finder gives you options for deleting, moving, copying or renaming them. You can perform all these actions easily by selecting the respective buttons from the toolbar.
So if you have a large collection of images, then you can check your collection quickly for any duplicate images. The duplicate files not only waste your valuable hard disk space but also make it hard to manage your picture collection. Using free Duplicate Finder, you can get rid of those unneeded copies of pictures and make your picture collection well organized.
You can download Duplicate Finder from http://www.ashisoft.com/duplicate-images-finder.htm.