In the last edition I told you of how I use SyncToy by Microsoft to keep my data backed up and files coordinated in multiple computers. This however does not help when you have multiple copies of the same file on one computer. In my backing up and reinstalls this past Holiday season I literally ran out of hard drive room. Instead of purchasing more space I decided to check for duplicated files, pictures, programs and videos (downloaded and home).

My first test program was CloneSpy.

Even though the latest version has been out since 2006, it has proven to be a very stable program. I has various sort methods and I ended up not clicking on files twice thus not selecting ones to delete the first day and a half I used the program.

The Good: It found all duplicates, even if the names were different such as some home videos and over 200 pictures that had the camera assigned name and where I had changed the name. Another great feature is that after searching my hard drives (yes multiple drives) it brought up the largest files first and the proceeded with the smaller drives.

The Bad: This program finds all the files that are true duplicates however, you have to click twice on each instance of the file to be sure that it is marked for removal. There is no logical order for the way the files are found. One time three files may be found the first listed under the C: drive, the second under D:\My Downloads and the third under My Documents. The next duplicate files may be under the exact same directories but the order they are listed is different.

What would be a great idea would be if you could select a folder that is all duplicates and just delete the folder, no such luck, or of you could at least select to delete all duplicates in a certain folder automatically but instead you have to delete one set up duplicates at a time.

Well, that’s it for this review, in the next edition I will run another review on a duplicate file remover.