8 free tools to find and remove duplicate files

You may not notice it at first sight, but a deeper look will surely reveal a few dozen duplicate files on your hard drive, eating up precious disk space. Are you going to stay there, without lifting a finger? Of course not. Plus, you can count on several software apps which will lend you hand in the tedious yet rewarding task of removing duplicate files from your computer.

There are different kinds of duplicate removers, depending on the type of file you want to delete. You can find general purpose tools, and also other tools that have been specifically designed to find duplicate MP3 files or duplicate images. Whatever your personal situation is, take a look at the following list and you’ll find the right app for you.

1. Remove duplicate files
This is where you’ll find the largest number of available apps.  They all serve the same purpose: find and remove duplicate files, no matter what type or extension they are. Most of them support the usage of filters to refine search, and use different methods to find duplicates: size, name, byte-by-byte comparisons and CRC checksums are some of them. The only problem is that they usually have very similar names, so if you find one you really like, be sure to learn its name! Here are some of the tools you can use, all of them for free:

• Duplicate Files Finder - Open source tool that stands out for its speed at searching

• Duplicate File Finder - Features multi-thread scans and can also delete empty files

• Fast Duplicate File Finder - With built-in preview for images and multimedia files

• Easy Duplicate File Finder - Flexible scanning options and support for multiple drives

2. Remove duplicate MP3
MP3s are the kind of file you’re most likely to have scattered across different platforms, devices or folders, which usually means you have a dozen copies of the same song. In order to avoid this mess, the best you can do is make use of a duplicate remover that’s been specially developed to locate and delete duplicate MP3 files. Here’s a couple of them, both for free:

• Duplicate Music Files Finder - Finds duplicate MP3 and also corrects misspelt tags

• Music Content Inspector - Slow yet very efficient MP3 duplicates finder

3. Remove duplicate photos
Photos are not as common as MP3 duplicates, but if you have a digital camera and transfer pics to many other locations you can also end up with a few copies of the same picture. Again, there are specialized duplicate detectors for photos, which scan your photo library and can detect similarities not only between their names and sizes, but also their actual content. Here are two of them, both for free:

• Duplicate Images Finder - Analyzes the content of the image to find duplicates

• SimilarImages - Uses a fast method to scan your system and detect duplicate photos