How to remove duplicate files on your hard disk

Digitalvolcano is home to a selection of useful Windows utilities but the one we are after is Duplicate Cleaner. Select the link on the left by clicking on it once and at the next screen, find the Download link in the left-hand panel and click it. When the download screen appears, click the link to download the Duplicate Cleaner installation file to the PC.

Ignore any security warnings, click Save and then use the Save As dialogue box to choose a location for the downloaded file – we usually go for the Windows Desktop – and click Save again. Double-click the new program icon on the Desktop, ignore any Windows security warnings, click Run and then follow the installation wizard; put a tick next to the Create a Desktop icon option, then just accept the suggested settings. At the end, click Finish, choose your preferred language and the program will load. If this box appears, click the Check for Updates button and follow the prompts.

We strongly recommend performing a backup before removing any files from a PC’s hard disk, but because people don’t always do what they’re supposed to, Duplicate Cleaner has an extra built-in safeguard. Click the Options menu at the top to open it and make sure there are ticks next to Protect Windows, Protect System Files and Protect DLL/EXE files. These settings are switched on by default and so long as they stay that way, you shouldn’t go far wrong.

At the main Duplicate Cleaner screen, make sure the Search Criteria tab is selected and then click the ‘C’ folder at the top of the left-hand column. Click the blue arrow between the columns to move it into the right-hand column. Next, click the Select button in the File Search panel, choose Music Data and click Select again. This instructs the program to search the entire disk for duplicate audio files – click Go.

Depending on the size of the hard disk, the process may take a while. When the scan is finished, Duplicate Cleaner will display a summary of the results. Here, it has found 95 different audio files that it thinks are duplicates, so click the Close button to sort them out. Results are arranged in rows and columns like a spreadsheet – the columns can be resized by holding the mouse pointer over the grey bars that separate columns until it changes to two arrows. Here we are making the Path column bigger because we want to see where things are stored.

It’s easy to sort the results in various ways by clicking on different column headings. Here for example, we have clicked on the Size column once and then again to sort the results by size so the largest duplicates appear at the top of the list. We have also increased the size of the File Name column so we can see that more clearly. Sometimes it’s easy to spot a duplicate that’s ripe for pruning. For example, we can see that we have got two copies of one of Windows’ sample music files, a Beethoven excerpt.

Both these music files have the same name, file size and file type (WMA, or Windows Media Audio) so it looks pretty safe to delete one of them. To make sure though, we’ll right-click on one of them and choose Open containing folder in Explorer. From here we can double-click on the file to play it and make sure it’s what we think it is.

Tick the empty boxes next to any files to be removed and then click the Remove Selected button. Duplicate Cleaner then shifts the files to the Recycle Bin if that option is checked, or removes them permanently if it isn’t. Click Delete Files to confirm the deletion. If you have got spare storage and want to check files are expendable before completely removing them, select a folder under the Move to Folder option and, optionally, put a tick next to ‘Keep folder structure at destination’ – then click Move Files. For this Workshop, ignore the Create Hardlinks option. Then click Close to finish.

Let’s try something else. Click the Search Criteria tab at the top and then select the folder in the Search path column and click the ‘x’ button to remove it. Click the Add folder button under the ‘x’ and Windows Explorer to navigate to the My Pictures folder, select it and click OK. Click the Select button in the File Search panel and this time choose Images/Pictures and click Select. Select the photos for removal and use the Image Preview button to make sure they are the right ones.

Close the preview window by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right-hand corner and then click the Selection Assistant button. This dialogue box displays various ways to remove multiple files by date, size or by deleting all but one of the files in the group; there is also a range of advanced options for more experienced users who may be familiar with file paths. There are three options that relate specifically to audio files and files to be kept based on recording quality, length and so on.