NoDupe

With terabyte disks, duplicate files are a matter of convenience, not capacity. Today’s tools actually do a great job at what earlier programs failed to do: distinguish actual duplicate files by more than name or size. NoDupe from OTIS Soft compares the actual content of files, not just their attributes or metadata. This free tool’s specialty is finding duplicate music files.

NoDupe’s user interface is very plain but super-easy to understand: Tabs for Search and Results in the main window, and one entry, a Help file (which also accesses the log), in the menu bar. To the left of the main view, a drop-down list offered search types: All Files, Directories, Large Files, and Music Files. We could add custom searches, too; a Customize Search pop-up let us enter specific extensions to search, filter by file size, and set other options. We set our search type, Music Files, and selected two physical disks to search in the Search tab’s tree view, though we could browse to any folder or directory to further narrow and speed up our search. NoDupe tracked its progress as it compared large numbers of files. When it finished its scan, NoDupe presented its findings in numbered, highlighted groups in the Results tab. Check boxes let us select files to export, which moves files to a new directory and saves them as a CSV file. A handy Auto Mark tool automatically selects batches of files by date, size, or path, based on cutoff points we entered in the settings. The Preview tool is especially valuable for sorting out duplicate pictures. When it’s selected, it displays a small preview (or large thumbnail) of images and other compatible files in a pop-up. When we we’d made our choices, we pressed Delete to remove all the checked duplicates at once.

NoDupe proved capable at distinguishing duplicates from versions and completely different files that look like duplicates. We’d like to see Select All and Deselect All buttons (especially Deselect All) since it’s possible to overlook checked files in long file lists. Beyond that, it’s hard to fault NoDupe, which can sort out your far-flung music archives.

Duplicate finders will always save you time and energy. They will find any file which is similar to others, so you will not have to browse through every folder on your computer to find them yourself. A quick and efficient solution for getting rid of these files is NoDupe. There is nothing much to say about this software, except that it will find any duplicate files and it lets you delete them by simply clicking a button.

NoDupe is lightweight, so it can be downloaded and installed fast. The system requirements are not high and you can run the program on Windows XP, Vista or Win 7.

Setting up the search process is very simple. A tree structure, with check boxes, makes it possible to target specific folders or entire disk partitions. You can set the program to look for specific types of files or all of them by selecting an option from a drop menu, on the right side of the interface. You can start searching by clicking the Search button in the lower right area of the window. Just like the software’s name, the search process is not long and it will be done in a few seconds.

The results are listed under a different navigation tab. Even if they are on different partitions, duplicate files are placed one next to the other in the list and they are color coded as well. This will make it very easy to spot similar files. The software can automatically mark the newest, oldest, largest or smallest duplicates. These settings can be made with the aid of radio buttons on a separate window and it will only take a few seconds. After marking the files, they can be erased immediately by clicking the Delete button in the lower right corner of the interface.

Before searching for duplicates, you can set up your own parameters. Clicking the Customize button, under the Search tab, will open a new window, where you may define a new search type. It is possible to specify file extensions, set the program to ignore media information in audio files, match directories and filter by file size. Your new search type can be found in the drop menu, under the Search tab.

The only thing that comes to our mind when we get low disk space notification is a disk cleanup. Although a disk cleanup is an effective way to reclaim hard disk space by deleting cache and temporary files, but if you want to free up some more space then deleting duplicate files will also help you get back considerable amount of disk space.

Obviously you can’t imagine spending your weekend hunting and dumping duplicate files on your computer manually. To make this task automatic, one of the best available options is NoDupe
Pros:
NoDupe is much faster than other similar programs. You only need to choose what type of files to look for and the software will find duplicates in a few seconds.

Cons:
It is not possible to search for duplicates according to a keyword.