You cannot find the file that you downloaded last week? So what do you do? You download it once again. Looking for that one file on your hard drive is not easy and why search for it on the hard drive when you can quickly download it from a known website. This habit soon leads to a pile up of identical files hoarding the valuable storage space on the hard drives. I myself have succumbed to downloading the Ubuntu ISO files many times and later have found identical copies that I have already downloaded some time in the past.
These duplicate files serve no purpose and just waste away the storage space on your computer. Fortunately, finding and deleting them is very easy using a specialized tool like Duplicate File Eraser. This software can scan and find the duplicate files using the file hashes. In the options for the program you can choose three different types of hashing algorithms – MD5, SHA1 and CRC32. The SHA1 ensures much better detection, but CRC32 is the fastest among these, so you can make the decision based on whether you want fast results or much more accurate detection.
After picking the options like the file size limit, file types, hashing algorithms, and whether to search the sub-directories, you can choose the folders/drives that you want to scan for the identical files followed clicking on the small search icon in the toolbar. Results are displayed in the “Results” tab instantly. Identical files are grouped together and you can see their file paths, MD5 hash and the file size. You can choose to delete, move or copy the identical files.
Conclusion: Duplicate File Eraser is a small and minimalist identical file finder and remover. You can also choose to move or copy the identical files to a different location before deleting them.
You can download Duplicate File Eraser from http://www.f2ko.de/en/dfe.php.