If you have files on your computer worth protecting, most likely you’ve been doing backups one way or another.  Usually people get started with backups by simply copying files to an extra folder, thumb drive, memory stick, or external disk drive.  When moving to a new computer, more copies get made.

Next thing you know, your backups get duplicated several times over and you end up with dozens of gigabytes of duplicate files.  You could spend days or weeks plowing through folders trying to get rid of all the duplicates.  Photos especially end up being confusing because cameras are simplistic and repetitive in how they name files.

There’s a solution.  There are programs you can run that automatically sort through all your files and do a very thorough job of finding duplicates that you can delete. The one I use is called “Duplicate File Finder”.  You can download and install it from CNET’s “Download.com”.  It’s easy and safe to install and fairly straightforward to run.

After installing the Finder, it will pop up an online, step-by-step tutorial.  The main things for getting started is to 1.  Select a location-drive to search, and then 2. click the Search button in the upper left corner.  If you are Searching a lot of files or drives, your search could take many hours, possibly overnight.  You might want to run this before you go to bed.

Happy Computing!

Steve