Clean out redundant files

[Derek L]

Does your hard drive appear to be full of documents, photos and music? Well, it may not be as full as it looks.

Duplicate files may be wasting space. This is especially true of large digital photo or music collections. Fortunately, sorting and comparing files happens to be a specialty of computers.

All you need is the right software. CloneSpy is a free program that can find and delete duplicate files. CloneSpy finds and reports duplicates even if they bear different file names.

CloneSpy also catches files identical in name only. You might, for example, have different versions of the same document.

You can set CloneSpy to delete redundant files automatically. Or, have all duplicates moved to a folder for you to peruse. I would avoid the automatic option to be on the safe side.

Be careful with this program. If you're unsure about a file or duplicate, keep it on your hard drive.

CloneSpy works with Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP.

Cost: Free

Link: www.clonespy.com

[Cherub (a.k.a. Steve L.)]

This looks waykool!
Just in case anyone doesn't RTFM (read the manual), here's an excerpt:

Warning!

If you choose the option Automatically delete in the Action frame CloneSpy will automatically delete files without any further confirmation.


Run the scanning process only on drives or folders where you are both aware of the contents and confident that it is safe to allow files to be deleted.


Be especially careful about scanning system folders! Over-zealous use could have very damaging effects.


Never use CloneSpy to scan the Windows folder or the whole drive where Windows is installed with automatic deletion. This will kill your system because there are certain files with the same content which Windows does not regard as redundant duplicates.


Hardlinks (NTFS specific) are not supported. Therefore, CloneSpy will handle hardlinks like normal files. Be careful!