DUPLICATE FILES

[filgrastin]

I have a lot of duplicate files on my computer that are taking up valuable disk space.  There are online offers to scan your computer for free and take care of this problem but I do not know how safe they are and I always decline their free offers.  Is there a way that I can carry out this operation myself to get rid of these excess duplicate files?

[Dragon-Fur]

Hi Fil,

There is no way of knowing what you mean by "duplicate" files.  It depends on where they are, how they got there, what they are... Are they system files, data files, your user files?

Every computer has some files are the same because software is similar from one computer to the next.  The minute you log in to your computer for the first time, you start creating unique files that are yours alone.  Whether they have any value is for you to judge.

IMO, you are best suited for the task of deciding what should be removed or kept on your computer.  Allowing a free program to scan and control files on your computer is risky.

Make backups of your files before removing your data.  There are help files to show you how to do this.

Questions to Consider...

How did you get so many duplicate files?  If you know the answer to that question, you may be able to decide whether you can safely remove them.  Where are the duplicate files?  What kind of duplicate files are they?  Who is telling you have all these duplicate files?  If it's a free program telling you this, I'd be very unlikely to respond to it...  Are you running out of disk space?  Why?

These are my Personal Opinions!

[Hanspuppa · Accepted solution]

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filgrastin wrote: I have a lot of duplicate files on my computer that are taking up valuable disk space.  There are online offers to scan your computer for free and take care of this problem but I do not know how safe they are and I always decline their free offers.  Is there a way that I can carry out this operation myself to get rid of these excess duplicate files?

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Hello filgrastin, I would not allow any online site to scan my system. Many of these sites offer this to try and gather information from your system, or install nasty code on your system. There may be some legitimate sites with no malicious intent, but I would be sceptical of any of these sites. As it has been said, nothing in life is free. There is always a catch.

You can perform a wild card search for duplicate files on your system, just by using the wildcard * and then the type of file you are searching for. An example would be *win.jpg This would search for any file that had the letters win.jpg Once these are located, the duplicate files may be deleted. You must be very aware that there are many duplicate files on your system, and they may need to be left there.

Only duplicate files that you have created could have one of the copies removed.

[filgrastin]

Thanks for your reply.  The duplicates happened when I upgraded to IE9.  I have deleted a lot of them but have enlisted the help of the Geek Squad to come in, mainly because I want to see if it was something that I did and to ensure that it does not happen in the future.

[AnnaLorf]

I highly recommend to use duplicate files deleter. Here's the link: www.duplicatefilesdeleter.com

[SteveFox89]

I Use Best Duplicate File finder And Also Its Free And Very Useful and Find Duplicate Files Accurately.

[Jasonanderson]

Detecting duplicate files manually is just a waste of time instead we can use any duplicate file finder to find and remove duplicate files easily with accuracy and ofcourse save our time.

[AlexanderJohnny]

I have Hp system but i had a similar problem many times. The duplicate files are such that they my hard drives used to end up with bad sectors. Also, there was always a shortage of free space. I regularly use "Duplicate Files Deleter" when i feel that my computer is lagging. You should try it too and i'm sure that you won't regret it.
It can delete all duplicate files eg.-music,EXE. and same name files etc.

[danielluke1984]

I too faced a similar problem. I was overwelhmed by the duplicates. Thankfully Duplicate Files Deleter came to my rescue. I think you should try it too.

[rewanya]

I think you should use Duplicate Files Deleter as it is very effective. It is 100% accurate and performs the scan quickly.