One of the worst things that you can do to your computer’s hard drive is to clog it up with duplicate files. Yes, perhaps you are doing this unknowingly, but duplicate files are still eating away valuable space in your PC.

One of the obvious reasons for the creation of many duplicate files is to keep certain files safe. You want to be double sure that your important documents are safe and so you push them on different drives in your system. Sadly, you also forget where you stored those files and then create another copy of the same file. These duplicate files are not caught by common disk cleaners; meaning they will pile up over time and eat away precious memory from your system.

Check out these delete duplicate files freeware tools that can identify and clear out all duplicates in a matter of minutes and free up valuable disk space in your PC. Of course, they are FREE, so worth the shot!

dupeGuru

dupeGuru is a great duplicate cleaning tool that works for Windows, Mac and Linux. The tool comes loaded with features like cross platform availability, multi language support, fuzzy matching algorithm and more.

Not sure about fuzzy matching algorithm? If you have two files that are the same, however they have mismatched filenames, like rose.jpg and rose1.jpg, then dupeGuru can find these two similar files with different file names and understand they are duplicates.

This delete duplicate file freeware also comes with two extra editions, Music Edition and Picture Editions that can help you find duplicate music and picture files, even if they are stored in different formats.

Duplicate Files Finder

This tool finds exact duplicate files that have the same content but not necessarily the same name. This free tool can sort all types of files by size and then compare files of equal size for content. Due to this limitation, this free duplicate file delete tool is not very useful for audio and picture file detection.

The Duplicate Files Finder is compatible with Windows and Linux operating system. As compared to other free duplicate file delete tools, this tool is much faster.

SimilarImages

If you are using Windows as an operating system, then SimilarImages is one of the best duplicate file deleting tools available. As the name suggests, this tool is predominantly for clearing the duplicate image files. You can increase or decrease the search speed and indicate how much similarity you want between two images, to consider it as a duplicate.

If you go for smart scan, then only exact duplicate files will be detected. If you opt for a more detailed search, you can get a comparison between similar but not exact images as well.

One of the features that make this delete duplicate files freeware tool stand out is that it shows you two images when it finds it as a duplicate and then lets you take a call about each image. So, you get the option of keeping or deleting one or both the images.

The Verdict

For getting the best out of your PC performance, it is essential to de-clutter your system from time to time. Duplicate files, whether big or small can really eat away space on your hard drive. As compared to other junk in your computer, these files can be more difficult to clean out, as they are legitimate files and a computer cleaner wouldn’t help.

Take the help of one of the delete duplicate files freeware listed above and free up space on your hard drive.