LookDisk : Search for Duplicates & for Text Inside Files

Linux operating system has many tools and utilities that can make all Windows users jealous. For example, you can use grep in Linux to search for text inside any file easily, but Windows lacks this sort of feature. Though Windows 8 brings searching of files through their contents, but it takes too much time and often crashes the Windows Explorer. Then there is fdupes which can look for duplicate files in Linux, and again Windows misses any such powerful duplicate finder tool. If you want to boost your searching power in Windows, then you can try the free LookDisk utility through which one can search for duplicates files, look for text inside files, search for files by their file names or extension and more.

You can get LookDisk utility either in a setup installer package or as a portable application from the LookDisk website. After the installation is finished, you can run LookDisk from any of the desktop or Start Menu shortcuts. The utility interface has multiple tabs on the left side through which you can access its multiple functions. The main window also allows you to clear temporary internet cache and temporary files on your computer.

Look Disk : Duplicate File Finder

If you want to search for duplicate files, then you can select Find Duplicate Files tab from the right side panel. The window that opens up has options to specify Search Parameters where you can select drives to search, whether you want to search by file contents, file length or file extension. Under the Ext. Parameters, you can choose to exclude some directories, specify various other parameters like attributes, file modification date etc. Clicking on the Search button starts the process for finding duplicate files, a list of which is shown in the end. In this list, you can select the files that you want to keep and the ones that you want to delete. You can also select all files except one from the each duplicate file group so you can quickly delete all the duplicates leaving only one file from each of the groups.

Look Disk : Duplicate File Finder

The Search Text function works similar to the ‘grep’ function in Linux. Using this you can search for specific text (words or phrase) in the files,. You can also search for the hex codes inside the files. It can search for text even inside PDF files. The Search Files function is nothing special and just lets you perform ordinary file search.

In the Disks Overview section, you can see all your local, removable and network disks. You can view their capacity, type, free space available, volume names and their serial numbers in a neat table. Here you can also find the largest files in a given disk drive, which may be helpful to find which large files are taking up your disk space.

Look Disk : Duplicate File Finder

In the options, you can choose to perform multi-threaded file search, display search progress, choose which archives to search inside and which folders should be excluded from the search, etc.

Look Disk : Duplicate File Finder

Conclusion: The LookDisk utility is the Swiss army knife of all search related functions. It can search for text  inside files, it can find duplicate files, perform advanced or ordinary file search and show you an overview of the disk drives connected to your PC. It is an all-in-one tool for all your search requirements.

You can download it from http://www.fxsearch.com/ldw_eng/.