Removing duplicate files

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

Hi

Is there a good utility to detect duplicate files based on content and then
to remove them?

Thanks

Regards
 
John said:
Hi

Is there a good utility to detect duplicate files based on content and
then to remove them?

Thanks

Regards
Click to expand...

Google is your friend. Type the following words into a Google search box,
then take your pick:

Windows duplicate file finder
 
did before coming here...there are a number of them..can't figure which one
has the features I need..even installed and tried some as well..thought
someone may have a recommendation

regards
 
Duplicate files are not compared as to content, they are compared to with
file name. It would be way IBM too complicated to compare the content to find
duplicate files.
 
???

Real duplicate file finders will find duplicate files by contents, even
if the name and creation dates are different, it would be pretty useless
to search for duplicate by filename only! Real duplicate finders have
options to allow you to select if you want to have the filename or
creation date included in the duplicate file criteria.

John
 
Not true.
Files are compared using the checksum value.
If CRC are equal, file contents must be equal/
 
Thanks, I'm updated with that.

John John - MVP said:
???

Real duplicate file finders will find duplicate files by contents, even
if the name and creation dates are different, it would be pretty useless
to search for duplicate by filename only! Real duplicate finders have
options to allow you to select if you want to have the filename or
creation date included in the duplicate file criteria.

John

.
Click to expand...
 
ED said:
Not true.
Files are compared using the checksum value.
If CRC are equal, file contents must be equal/
Click to expand...

Almost certainly that's true, but not always.

If the check-sum is four bytes, there's a one-in-four-quadrillion chance the
files could differ but have the same check-sum.
 
HeyBub said:
Almost certainly that's true, but not always.

If the check-sum is four bytes, there's a one-in-four-quadrillion chance
the files could differ but have the same check-sum.
Click to expand...

Also, a malicious person could have modified the file in such a way that the
CRC is the same as it was before the modification. Other checksum
mechanism, such as MD5 were designed to be more difficult to spoof in this
way, but it turned out to be not that much more difficult. To be really
sure that the content of two files is identical, one might verify that the
CRC, MD5, and SHA checksums are all identical for the two files.

-Paul Randall
 
Paul said:
Also, a malicious person could have modified the file in such a way that the
CRC is the same as it was before the modification. Other checksum
mechanism, such as MD5 were designed to be more difficult to spoof in this
way, but it turned out to be not that much more difficult. To be really
sure that the content of two files is identical, one might verify that the
CRC, MD5, and SHA checksums are all identical for the two files.

-Paul Randall
Click to expand...

See FC with the /b switch in Windows Help.
 
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