Dup-Finder

Repeat with me: "I hate duplicated files, I hate duplicated files..."
No jokes: this kind of nasty things can happen too often. We must have a tool to get rid of them, but Windows seems to underestimate the problem.
So let's download Dup-Finder (for free :)!

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What Dup-Finder does?

Dup-Finder scans all your hard drives (or partitions) for duplicated files. You can specify what duplicated means to you: I mean that you can ask Dup-Finder to find the files with the same file name only, for example. Or to choose the files with same file size. Or both (see "Options in detail" section for more details).
Finally you can delete these space-eating files with ease (or, better, send them to your recycle bin).

I've got the idea sawing the Space Wizard applet from Norton Utilities. Useful - I thought - but...
I've listed the cons I found for this program (these may be addressed in an updated release, I don't know):

  • Cannot scan across drives or partitions (Translation: if you have the file "duplicate.me" both on drive "C:" and "D:" the program won't find them).
  • You have a very little control of what's going on (maybe useful for newbies, but WE don't want limitations... ;)
  • You have to pay to use it (the last, the worst).

So get rid of this limitations and download Dup-Finder!

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Requirements

To use Dup-Finder you must have:

  • Any 32bit Windows version.
  • Some memory (big is better!).

A note: Dup-Finder tries to execute itself as fast as possible so it may use up all your processor's time... but don't worry we'll address this in the "How to use" section.

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Warnings

You use this program at your risk.
As you may guess, deleting system files may cause your system to hang. Dup-Finder doesn't give you any help on this. If you delete GDI32.dll and Windows dies it's your sin: I don't assume any responsibility for problems and/or errors. The hints I can give you are:

  1. If you're unsure of what you are deleting don't delete it.
  2. If you're sure send it to recycle so you can restore it if needed.
  3. If you want to delete DLL files, make sure you keep the one in your System directory (but think about it at least twice).
  4. NEVER delete INI files.
  5. OLD, BAK, B~K, TXT, ME, ~* files are usual safe to delete.

Again: you use this program at your risk. So pay attention!

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Installation

As usual, no installation program is provided. Just unzip the file in a directory you choose and execute DupFinder.exe from there.
And remember, the only things I place in your registry are under the Software\MindFlavor key.

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How to use

In this section I suppose you have the program correctly downloaded and installed: if you're not ready, please back to the relative section.

First of all you should specify if you want to search for files having a specific extension.
If you want select Extension in Search Flags and type in the extension. In this sample, we chosen MID files.

Image 1 - DupFinder (click to enlarge)

Now click Scan HDs and wait. When done you'll see a dialog box telling you how many files Dup-Finder has found.

Image 2 - Hard disk scan in progress (click to enlarge)

Now specify the Hunt flags and then press Hunt duplicates.
You will see a progress bar showing the percentual of progress. When the program finds a duplicate, it will add it in the big list (the white space).

Image 3 - Hard disk scan completed (click to enlarge)

When you want, you can double-click any item with duplicates and a new form will pop-up.
This form shows all the duplicates matching your scan criteria (that doesn't mean that the files are equals! For example if you just selected "Name" in the hunt flags, you will get all the files with the same name but only THIS!).
Clicking on a file shows relevant details on the rightmost panel.
Now you can press the first button (the crossed circle) to physically delete the file from disk or the other one to send it to recycle-bin.

Image 4 - Hunted file window (click to enlarge)

Enough? But to unleash the true power of Dup-Finder you should read the next section...

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Options in detail

This section explains in detail the Dup-Finder's search & hunt options.

Search flags:

Flag Description Pro Cons
Extension If you check it, you must specify an extension (excluding all the other files). Speeds up a lot the hunt search. With non-standard files (such as TXT, ME, some DOC) you may miss some duplicates.

Hunt flags:

Flag Description Pro Cons
Name The files must have equal file names to be considered equal. Very fast. Not useful with backup files (they have a different extension).
Size The files must have equal sizes to be considered equal. Very fast. None.
Creation date The files must have been created at same moment to be considered equal. (this means that one file is the copy of the other). Good to kill duplicated source files. None.
Attributes The files must have the same attributes to be considered equal. None. Does anybody uses this? ;-)
Binary The files must be bit-to-bit the same to be considered equal. No doubt! The files are equal in all the ways! Always use this to be sure! Slow! (Note: when you check this one the program checks for you the "Size" flag).
Zero size If checked the program looks for zero size files too. Just a tool to avoid finding empty files. None.

Some useful combos for the common files:

File type Extension Name Size Date Attributes Binary Zero size
Text files (TXT, ME...) No No Yes No No Yes Yes
Sounds (WAV, MP3, MID...) Yes No Yes No No Yes No
Movies (AVI, MOV, MPG...) Yes No Yes No No Yes No
Executables (EXE, COM) Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No
DLLs (DLL, OCX, VXD...) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Links (LNK) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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Download

If you download you accept all the risks explained in the "Warning" section and agree that I'm not responsible of any data loss or problem or crash or system hang or whatever.
Given so:
Version Comments Size Download
1.0
First public release.
237 Kb

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Last revision: September 8, 2003

@2002 Francesco Cogno