Operational Logging

Duplicate File Detective offers comprehensive operational logging through each phase of the duplicate file discovery and comparison process.

Search logging records the scan itself. Choose which events to capture - files found, files skipped, folders scanned, folders skipped, and files compared - and Duplicate File Detective writes them to CSV files in the directory you nominate, ready to open in a spreadsheet. Crucially, the skip and comparison entries explain why: why a file was passed over, why a folder was never entered, and what the outcome of each file comparison was. When a duplicate search returns more (or fewer) results than you expected, this is where the answer lives.

Alongside it, the event log records exceptional conditions encountered during searching and processing, classified as errors, warnings, or informational events. The most common entry by far is access denied - Windows refusing Duplicate File Detective access to a path - which usually points either to file system permissions on the account you're running under, or to User Account Control, in which case running Duplicate File Detective as an administrator resolves it.

Logging also extends to the actions you take on your files. Duplicate file move, delete, and zip operations can append a record of every processing event to a log file of your choosing, producing a durable audit trail of exactly what was done to which file - valuable in any environment where storage cleanup needs to be accountable. Individual scheduled tasks can write their own event logs too, so unattended overnight runs are just as reviewable as interactive ones.

Because detailed search logging costs performance and can consume significant disk space on large scans, it's best enabled deliberately - for troubleshooting, validation, or a one-off audit - and switched back off when you're done.