Hello dear readers. Today we will talk about duplicate files, as well as methods for dealing with them.
Based on the name itself, you probably already guessed what these files are. Such repetitive files are very polluting the hard drive, so you need to get rid of them periodically.
Duplicates appear on the computer randomly and due to the inattention of users. Although we are all human and we tend to accumulate all sorts of things. No matter how large the amount of memory your hard drive has, after removing duplicates it will become much freer than it was before this process was completed.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to remove duplicate files without third-party programs. For some reason, the Windows developers missed this moment, but people found a way out. There are many free programs on the Internet to get rid of duplicate files. Below I will list three of the best of them, and also give you the opportunity to download them.
CloneSpy
A very simple and convenient utility for cleaning your computer from duplicate files. Once launched, CloneSpy searches for checksums of files, ignoring the date and time of their creation, size, etc. This method of searching for duplicate files allows you to make a more accurate and detailed search.
But CloneSpy also has a disadvantage, because in the search results, in addition to copies, it can display files with the same name.
Free Download CloneSpy Utility
Auslogics Duplicate File Finder
A more powerful program for finding duplicate files. Performs a detailed analysis of the hard disk for the presence of identical files, at the end of which you will receive a list with all found duplicates.
I noticed that Auslogics Duplicate File Finder is well specialized in finding duplicate multimedia files, and these are gigabytes of the same music tracks, movies, pictures, etc.
Free Download Auslogics Duplicate File Finder
DupKiller
Also a very good program for finding and removing duplicate files. I really liked the function of setting the percentage of acceptable matches, which you can set manually before starting the analysis of the hard drive.One of the fastest ways to clog up a hard drive is to store duplicate files. Surely many are not even aware of their existence ... they can have different origins: 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 names. 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 a 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 a powerful duplicate search tool 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
Just like in real life, when unwanted 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 cleaner programs 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.
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In this article, we will talk about tools for detecting duplicate photos. In particular, today our review will visit six programs for finding duplicate photos on a computer running Windows. We will compare and choose among them the best and fastest.
There may be several reasons for the demand for such programs: on the one hand, your collection could grow so much that duplicates already take up a lot of space. On the other hand, even more often you just need a tool that will find the same or similar photos, saving you from having to look through these images yourself.
In our selection, there was a place for six interesting programs, four of which are distributed free of charge. Below, we will explain each of them and help you quickly navigate the interface if you decide to try these applications.
And in the final part, you will find a small comparison of all programs, in which we will see how they cope with finding the same pictures when they are slightly modified, and also check how well programs can cope with a large set of photos weighing several gigabytes.
Image Comparer
The first program in our review that looks for duplicate photos is called Image Comparer. Its strengths are: good functionality and interface translated into Russian, including detailed help information.
Now for the disadvantages. First, the program is not free. However, the cost of the license is a humane 350 rubles (although for some reason the site indicates the number 500). In addition, you can use Image Comparer for free for the first 30 days.
The second negative point is the slight confusion that can confuse an inexperienced user. For example, in order to search within one folder (in which others can be nested), you need to click on the "create gallery" button and select the desired directory in which the scan will be performed.
Next, you will immediately be prompted to give a name and save the file of the created gallery to any convenient place (this file will be needed by the program itself). Once this is done, you will see a list of all the images in the specified folder and its subfolders in the form of a list or thumbnails:
The buttons marked with arrows start the search for duplicates. The first button is a search within one gallery (the folder you have chosen), the second button is a little to the right - within several galleries. We went with the first option.
Next, the program suggested creating another service file in which the results would be saved for further convenient access to them. Actually, creating a file for the gallery and this file with search results can just confuse an inexperienced user a little. However, then everything is already simple. The found duplicates will appear in front of you:
They can be viewed as thumbnails or, by clicking on the “image pairs” tab, go to the view where the photos will already be compared with each other:
The slider in the center allows you to adjust the image similarity threshold. 100% - and you will only have a list of perfectly similar to each other, identical pictures. Lower values will display only similar photos.
In the settings you can see a huge list of formats from basic JPG and PNG to more exotic ones that the program works with. Formats can be added and excluded from the search. You can also configure the accounting of reflected and inverted images.
- Image Comparer program. Official site ;
- Russian language;
VisiPics
The next program is VisiPics. Unlike the Image Comparer discussed above, VisiPics is a free application that also specializes in photo duplicates. Alas, there is no localization into Russian here, but you definitely shouldn’t get upset about this: everything is very simple and extremely clear.
Using the side navigation bar (we circled it in a box), select the desired directory. Next, click the arrow with the "+" sign to add this folder to the list that will be searched. You can select more folders in the same way if you wish. Finally, in the third step, click the Play button to start the process of finding duplicates.
To the right of it is a special slider where you can adjust the level of "attentiveness" of the program. In the case of the default baseline, VisiPics found only two groups of duplicates for us, one of which consisted of three images, and the other of two:
These are the images that the program considers almost identical duplicates. However, if you lower the slider to the Loose level, then there will be images that simply look alike. In our case, when installing Loose instead of Basic, the application found four more (in the final test below - 5) groups of duplicates, and added one more picture to one of the two already found:
There are relatively few additional options for the program. Here you can configure the search in subfolders (it is enabled by default), the display of hidden folders, accounting for photos rotated 90 degrees. On the loader tab, you can ask VisiPics to ignore small files or, on the contrary, pictures with too high a resolution. The latter is important for speed.
- VisiPics program. Official site ;
- English language;
- Distribution: free.
Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder
If you are looking for an extremely simple program for high-quality duplicate photo and image search, which would be easy to understand, then pay attention to Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder. The interface is in English, but it is so simple that everyone will understand it.
Using the “+” button, specify the directory or several directories you need to search, then click Start Search and the search will start on them. The Scan Subdirectories option is enabled by default and is responsible for searching subfolders. The program copes with its tasks, finding both very similar:
Here are some slightly different pictures:
In the program settings, you can set the match to 100% if you only need exactly the same photos.
The settings themselves, as you can see, are few. Perhaps the saddest thing is that the program works with only five main formats: BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF. Moreover, the latter is not taken into account by default.
There are also options to ensure that duplicates are deleted directly to the trash and to disable the confirmation popup. The program can also be updated automatically.
- Official site ;
- English language;
- Distribution: free.
Similar Image Finder
The Similar Images Finder application greets us with an unkind message in English that you need to pay $34 for it. Nevertheless, for 30 days the program is ready to work for free. Next, a window appears prompting you to select directories to search for duplicates:
From it, we learn that Similar Images Finder supports 29 image formats, and the user can select specific formats for searching or exclude unnecessary ones. In the list, among other things, you can see ico and wbmp.
Clicking Next will start the search for duplicates, and when it is finished, click Next again to see additional settings. By adjusting them, you can fine-tune what appears in the results list. Finally, by clicking Next for the third time, you will finally see the result itself:
You can go to the next found picture by pressing the miniature arrow in the upper right corner. The entire list of found duplicates is opened by clicking on the big button at the top with the addresses of the current files.
In turn, pressing the Next button at the bottom will lead to the final stage of work. There, the program will display a list of what, in its opinion, are definitely duplicates and offer to delete them. In the screenshot above, the Similar Images Finder has dealt with the image where a watermark has been added and the histogram contrast has been changed.
Distinguishing between the pictures, the program calculated at the level of 5.5%. At the same time, in another example, where we added a strong blur effect to the second image, the differences in the application version for some reason amounted to only 1.2%:
Alas, the program, finding real duplicates, by default also shows many images that are completely different from each other, as if they have something in common:
- Similar Images Finder. Official site ;
- English language;
- Distribution: paid, 30 days free use.
Duplicator Remover Free
Duplicate Remover Free is the only program in our review that focuses not specifically on duplicate photos, but on finding duplicates in general. As practice shows, such universal solutions do not perform very well in tasks related to some narrower area.
However, today we are giving one such program a chance. As the word Free suggests, it is distributed free of charge. The second advantage of the application is the Russian language, and the third is the relative modernity against the background of other programs in this collection, many of which, unfortunately, have not been updated for many years.
You should click on the "add directory" button and select the desired folders. By default, the program in the specified directory did not find anything for us at all, however, when we selected the item “similar images” instead of “exact duplicates” at the top, four groups of duplicates were immediately found, one of which consisted of three files at once:
The application has very few additional features. In particular, you can exclude files before and after a certain size from the search.
- Duplicate Remover Free. Official site ;
- Russian language;
- Distribution: free.
AntiDupl
The final participant in our review - the AntiDupl program may appeal to you for several reasons at once. First, it's free. Secondly, it has a Russian interface. The latter, however, is not obvious. In order to enable Russian, open the View menu and in the Language section select the appropriate item:
Unlike others, this program is not installed, but is located in a self-extracting archive, which extracts it, along with the necessary files, into a separate folder.
To prepare the search for duplicates, click on the button labeled Open and add the necessary directories in the window that appears:
Next, you can click OK, and then activate the green “start search” button on the toolbar. Using a basic algorithm, the program found several groups of duplicates for us:
On the "search" tab, you can find out that AntiDupl supports 13 formats, among which, in addition to traditional JPG / PNG, there are ICON, PSD and EXIF. Of course, formats can be chosen. There is also a check for defects, blockiness and blurring in the options, and in the last two cases, you can set a threshold. It is possible to search in hidden and system directories.
- Anti Dupl program. Official site;
- Russian language;
- Distribution: free.
When searching for duplicates, some users are interested in 100% matching in order to get rid of duplicates in their collection. However, the task often arises to find exactly similar pictures.
And here is a huge scope for possible differences. This can be different formats, resolutions, cropped versions of the same image, adding frames and watermarks, changed colors and captions on pictures.
We tried to take into account most of these factors, and after all the tests, we ended up with a small set with more than six dozen pictures. In them, we created nine groups of duplicates. To be honest, our experience does not exactly claim to be the ultimate truth, but it was interesting to try. The results are as follows:
- Duplicator Remover Free: found only 3 groups of duplicates;
- Similar Images Finder: found 4 groups, but an inconvenient interface, a lot of false results, and at the same time, the paid application greatly spoiled the overall impression;
- AntiDupl found 3 types of duplicates by default, setting the SSIM algorithm increased the search result to 5 groups;
- VisiPics at the basic search level found only 2 groups of duplicates, however, setting the slider to the Loose level allowed us to find 7 groups already;
- Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder found 7 groups of duplicates;
- Image Comparer was also able to detect 7 groups.
In doing so, Image Comparer was able to find images that were missed by Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder and VisiPics, which, in turn, filled in the gaps of Image Comparer.
We determine the fastest program for finding duplicate photos
At the same time, the quality of the program also depends on its speed. 60+ pictures is, of course, not something that users can work with. So we did another test. This time for speed. To do this, we took a selection of 4450 different images, the total weight of which exceeded 2.1 GB.
Two programs from this review, alas, did not take any place in the test. As it turned out, Similar Images Finder, for which they ask for $ 34, in the free version is ready to process no more than 200 images at a time.
In turn, the universal search engine for duplicates Duplicate Remover Free, faced with a catalog of a serious size, worked intensively for more than five minutes, and then thoroughly froze. The rest of the programs showed the following times:
- AntiDupl: 0:39;
- Image Comparer: 1:02 (35 seconds to create a gallery and 27 seconds to search);
- VisiPics: 2:37;
- Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder: 3:17.
As a result, Image Comparer and AntiDupl clearly took the lead in the speed test. It took them about or, in the case of AntiDupl, less than a minute to process our archive.
Conclusion
Let's summarize. If you need to find not the same, but exactly similar photos that differ, for example, by a signature or a watermark, then Image Comparer, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder and VisiPics in Loose mode will do the job better than others.
In terms of processing speed of a large collection of images, the undisputed leaders are AntiDupl and Image Comparer.
Finally, in terms of the convenience of the interface, we liked Image Comparer and VisiPics, which allow you to visually evaluate all groups of duplicates on the go. In turn, for the clarity of comparing the characteristics of individual duplicates, we also note AntiDupl.
Good day.
I think that those users who have a lot of photos, pictures, wallpapers more than once faced with the fact that dozens of identical files are stored on the disk (and there are hundreds of similar ones ...). And they can take up a lot of space!
If you look for similar pictures on your own and delete them, then there will not be enough time and effort (especially if the collection is impressive). For this reason, I decided to try one utility on my small wallpaper collection (about 80 GB, about 62000 pictures and photos) and show the results (I think many users would be interested in this). So…
Search for similar images in a folder
Note! This procedure is somewhat different from searching for identical files (duplicates). It will take significantly longer for the program to scan each image and compare it with others to find similar files. But I want to start this article with this method. A little lower in the article I will consider the search for full copies of pictures ( this is done much faster).
On fig. 1 shows the experimental folder. The most common, on the most ordinary hard drive, hundreds of pictures were downloaded and uploaded to it, both their own and from other sites. Naturally, over time, this folder has grown greatly and it was necessary to “thin out” it ...
Image Comparer(scan utility)
Official site: http://www.imagecomparer.com/rus/
A small utility for finding similar pictures on your computer. It helps to save a lot of time for those users who work with pictures (photographers, designers, wallpaper collectors, etc.). Supports Russian language, works in all popular Windows OS: 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits). The program is paid, but there is a whole month for testing to make sure of its abilities :).
After launching the utility, a comparison wizard will open in front of you, which will guide you step by step through all the settings that you need to set to start scanning your pictures.
2) On my computer, the pictures are saved in one folder on one disk (therefore, there was no point in creating two galleries ...) - it means a logical choice " Within one group of images (gallery)”(I think that for many users things are about the same, so you can immediately stop your choice on the first point, see Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. Gallery selection.
3) In this step, you just need to specify the folder (folders) with your pictures, which you will scan and look for similar pictures among them.
4) In this step, you need to specify how the search will be performed: similar images or only exact copies. I recommend choosing the first option, so you will have more copies of the pictures that you hardly need ...
5) The last step is to specify the folder where the search and analysis result will be saved. For example, I chose the desktop (see Fig. 6) ...
Rice. 6. Selecting a location to save the results.
6) Next, the process of adding images to the gallery and their analysis begins. The process takes a long time (depending on the number of your pictures in the folder). For example, in my case it took a little over an hour…
7) Actually, after scanning, you will see a window (as in Fig. 8), which will show pictures with exact duplicates and pictures very similar to each other (for example, the same photo with different resolutions or saved in a different format, Fig. 7).
Rice. 8. Results…
Advantages of using the utility:
- Freeing up space on your hard drive (and, sometimes, significantly. For example, I deleted about 5-6 GB of extra photos!);
- An easy wizard that will guide you step by step through all the settings (this is a big plus);
- The program does not load the processor and disk, and therefore, when scanning, you can simply minimize it and go about your business.
Minuses:
- Relatively long time for scanning and gallery formation;
- Similar pictures are not always similar (that is, the algorithm sometimes makes mistakes, and with a comparison degree of 90%, for example, it often produces little-similar pictures. Actually, manual “moderation” is indispensable).
Search for identical pictures on a disk (search for complete duplicates)
This option for cleaning the disk is faster, but it is rather “rough”: to remove only exact duplicates of pictures in this way, but if they are of different resolutions, the file size or format is slightly different, then this method is unlikely to help. In general, for regular quick "weeding" of the disk - this method is better, and after it, it is logical, you can look for similar pictures, as described above.
Glary Utilities
Quite often on the computer same images appear- is not it? And the more folders you have with pictures, the more likely it is that they contain a large number of duplicates. It's not critical, but it still takes up space. You will be surprised how much disk space will be freed up if you check and remove all duplicate pictures. That is what we will do in our today's article. As a rule, we copy from a camera, phone, tablet, etc. whole folders with photos and rarely delete copies even if we notice them. Why? Yes, because it's hard. Let's see how we can automate the process of finding duplicate images and removing them.
Why can't it be done manually? It is possible, but doing it manually is a very time-consuming and tedious task. And if you have thousands of photos... it's also unproductive. It's better to have a cup of coffee while the program is running than to strain your brain and think "I saw this photo or not - is it a copy?". Yes, and it's almost impossible. (looking ahead, I’ll say - after scanning on my computer, the program found 11,934 identical pictures !!!) As for me, it’s better to let the “piece of iron work” ... If you are of the same opinion, then look below for detailed instructions on how to find and remove the same Pictures.
There are several programs that can look for duplicate .
AntiDupl.NET
DuplicateFinder
DuplicatefileDetector
Duplicatecleaner
ImageDupeless
Imagecomparer
Duplicate File Remover
Many programs are perfectly able to work with different files and with different tasks.
But we will consider only one program - which can cope with the task as well as possible. Why this particular program? AntiDupl.NET is a free program with very powerful functionality. It allows you to do search for similar or completely identical images in all major graphic formats such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, etc. It should be noted that the program analyzes the content itself graphic files, which allows you to find not only completely identical, but also similar images. The program supports the Russian interface, it is possible to flexibly manage search parameters, and you can also determine some types of defects in images. And at the same time the program is quite clear and I am sure that you will not have any difficulties.
Let's see an example of finding and deleting duplicate images
Open the program and specify the interface language
And add a directory in which all pictures in all internal folders will be taken into account. Or some specific folder of your choice.
You can also customize the search options (if needed). Then press " To start searching".
Let's be patient for a few minutes.
Then the program will show all "pairs" of identical pictures in the result window and you can start deleting unnecessary copies of your photos. There are two options - delete the first or the second. You can look in the viewports and determine which photo you want to delete. If you want to delete, for example, all the first pictures, then you need to press the key combination Ctrl + A and click the "" button in the top panel Remove first images in selected results". After that, all the first pictures will go to the trash. After deleting all the duplicates, there was about 4.6Gb more space on my computer. I hope this article will help you get rid of unnecessary copies. Good luck!
