Duplicate Cleaner 3.1

Duplicate Cleaner can help you save disk space by finding and eliminating duplicate files.
It has a nice and clean tabbed interface. You can simply follow the order suggested by the tabs, as if you were using a wizard. Therefore, you can start by narrowing your search by providing the desired criteria. Two modes are available: regular and audio. The first is appropriate for general duplicate scanning, and should decide whether you want to compare the files’ contents or only their attributes. The second is intended to find duplicate audio files based on file attributes and tags. A third mode, allowing you to find duplicate images, is only available in the Pro version.

One of the drawbacks of most programs intended to find duplicate files is that they do not take into account that sometimes the system and installed programs require some duplicate files to work properly. Thus, necessary duplicates appear on the result lists and the users may unknowingly erase them. Duplicate Cleaner can avoid this issue by allowing you to decide whether system files and folders should be scanned or not.

It is a pity that the free version of this program seems to be crippled, as using many of the functions requires buying the professional edition. For example, when you scan your music database, it will probably come up with a long list of false duplicates, probably because this version cannot compare your songs’ data.

Pedro Castro

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