Duplicate File finder for Windows that groups according to folder?

[paulri]

I have a ton of duplicate files on my backup hard drive, so I want to eliminate them. The vast majority of these duplicates are entire folders of videos & pics.

I downloaded & ran Auslogics Duplicate file finder, but it only groups individual items. I was hoping it would tell me that entire folders were the same (had the same contents).

Is there a duplicate file finder program, that can do this? Freeware is preferred here. I don't need a lot of bells & whistles.

 

[Dave9]

There is a bit of a learning curve to get the right syntax for it, and it has a lot of bells & whistles in how many ways you can refine your search, but I use an indexing/search app called "Everything" and it can do it with a simple "dupe:" command, or you can refine it with further variables such as file type or file name extension, size, so many more, and see folders and their sizes, sort columns by file name or folder, etc.

There may be something out there more purpose specific, but Everything is well worth learning to use, as a tool to quickly find... Everything, lol. It builds a database of files per a scheduled interval so when you want to find something, it doesn't have to query (and spin up in the case of sleeping NAS or network shared HDDs) and read contents of all drives again, can find search hits in a fraction of a second. Best thing that ever happened to my file searches was back when Microsoft screwed up the windows search function so I was forced to find Everything. I use the portable version... several times a day.

voidtools

www.voidtools.com

 

[paulri]

Thanks for the reference. If a dedicated duplicate file finder isn't suggested, I'll give this a shot.

There is a bit of a learning curve to get the right syntax for it, and it has a lot of bells & whistles in how many ways you can refine your search, but I use an indexing/search app called "Everything" and it can do it with a simple "dupe:" command, or you can refine it with further variables such as file type or file name extension, size, so many more, and see folders and their sizes, sort columns by file name or folder, etc.

There may be something out there more purpose specific, but Everything is well worth learning to use, as a tool to quickly find... Everything, lol. It builds a database of files per a scheduled interval so when you want to find something, it doesn't have to query (and spin up in the case of sleeping NAS or network shared HDDs) and read contents of all drives again, can find search hits in a fraction of a second. Best thing that ever happened to my file searches was back when Microsoft screwed up the windows search function so I was forced to find Everything. I use the portable version... several times a day.

voidtools

www.voidtools.com

 

[Dave9]

Oh, and it's FREE. I wish this forum had an infinite amount of time to edit posts like some others.

Another thing I may do if folders look pretty much the same but I'm not sure if the entire contents are, is just move one folder's content into the other one, then the dupilcates just overwrite themselves. In semi-modern versions of windows there's that checkmark box at the bottom of the dialog asking what you want to do when it sees that is going to happen, can apply the decision to all instances in one click.