Find Duplicate Files
Find duplicates across multiple local, remote (network), and removable file systems at once with our intelligent, multi-threaded analysis engine.
The duplicate search summary report shows precisely what was found.
A single duplicate file search can span as many search paths as you need - local hard drives and SSDs, external and removable media, mapped drives, and network shares or NAS devices addressed by fully qualified UNC path. Add paths by browsing the file system tree, by typing a UNC path directly, or simply by dragging folders in from Windows Explorer. Each path carries its own checkbox, so you can include or exclude it from the next run without ever removing it from your project.
Search paths can also be given special roles that shape how duplicates are reported. Protected paths are scanned and reported, but the files they contain can never be processed - ideal for the folders you want to compare against but never touch. Non-inclusive paths compare only against other paths, never against themselves. And a master path requires that every reported duplicate group contain at least one file from your authoritative location, making it easy to keep one golden copy of your data and find the strays scattered everywhere else.
While the scan runs, a live progress window reports folders scanned and skipped, files scanned and compared, and duplicates found so far - along with the folder currently being examined. You can stop the search at any time and keep whatever results have been gathered. When it finishes, the duplicate search summary report shown above records the paths searched, any excluded paths, total elapsed run time, and the full tally of duplicate files found, files scanned, files skipped, and folders scanned and skipped.
Behind the scenes, Duplicate File Detective does the time-consuming work of finding and comparing files for you. Folder discovery and file content hashing run across multiple threads, disk I/O can be dropped to a low priority so the rest of your machine stays responsive, and NTFS hard links are tracked so that several links to the same physical data are never mistaken for duplicates of one another. Exactly how files are matched is entirely up to you - see the file comparison options.