AusLogics Duplicate File Finder

Files you forgot you already downloaded days ago, programs that install new files without deleting or overwriting the old ones, early drafts of the report you delivered last month, you name it – for one reason or another, your disk is bound to harbor tens of useless duplicate files that only specialized programs can locate for you.

AusLogics Duplicate File Finder is surely one of them, and it does it quickly and effectively.

This free utility is also a one-task tool, which simplifies things enormously. The program’s interface is simple and attractive, even though the list of “other” options available may confuse more than one new user. Those options regarding driver update, disk clean-up, or recovery of lost files are but ads to other Auslogics tools that you need to download, install, and pay for.

The functionality that the program actually offers for free is in the first two tabs in the top-left area of the main interface – Duplicate File Finder and Reports. Clearly, the former is where you check the disks or folders your wish to inspect, select the types of files you’re looking for (images, audio files, video files, archives, applications, or all files), and wait for the program to display all those dupes you had no idea that were there. The latter is for checking your PC’s CPU, disks, network, and memory usage in a graphical way, and to save reports with these data for further use or to share.

The program takes a few seconds to display a list of all the dupes in your system. The list shows all groups of files that look identical to the program, not only in their file names but also content-wise. You can browse those groups of files individually, checking if they’re really duplicates or not and ticking the one(s) you want to get rid of, or you can tell the program to do it for you. It can select duplicate files by checking their modification date (either the newest or the oldest files), by picking one in each group randomly, or by selecting all those files in a group that look like duplicates. Once you’ve made your choice, the program can delete all your selected files with just one click. But before performing that somehow risky task, you can double-check the contents of a certain file by previewing it, checking detailed information about it, or taking a look at its header in Hex format. The program lacks a blacklist/whitelist option for system or other sensitive files, so be extra careful when removing files you don’t know by name. Other than that, feel free to use this simple utility to free up disk space every time you see your storage shrink.