Find and delete duplicate files safely
Your PC is very likely littered with duplicate files that often occupy massive amounts of disk space. This may be photos but also files related to program installations or even Windows itself. You cannot delete these files without risk unless you have Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder! That's because many programs will stop working when you delete their files. It takes smart technology to get it right: Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder not just deletes file duplicates but keeps a master file and replaces all others with internal links to that file. This means your programs won't know the difference and will work as expected.
- High-performance scans for duplicate files
- View duplicates by category
- Exclude files from deletion
- Safely delete duplicate files
- Auto-replace redundant files with hard links
- Reclaim disk space
- Restore deleted files from auto-backups
Spectacularly fast duplicate scans
Where other programs take forever to find file duplicates, Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder delivers results at stunning speeds. Your system is scanned and file contents matched so quickly that it always feels like magic! Results are then presented neatly arranged by file type, including documents, audio, and video files. And you can always click to view individual matches and exclude them from deletion, if necessary.
Where duplicate files come from
Programs frequently use identical library files but keep individual copies in their installation folders. Redundant internet downloads or copies of photos spread across various locations are another classic example of file duplicates. So there are duplicates that serve no purpose whatsoever and others that applications rely on to work. Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder uses Windows hard links to avoid program issues after file deletion and to ensure applications still find their required files.
How hard links safely replace duplicate files
Hard links are the superheroes among the shortcut options in WIndows: They hardly occupy any disk space and instead reference a single master file. In the case of Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder, this means a file that currently has four copies, each of them used by a different application, is reduced to a single master file and four hard links pointing to that file. The process is entirely automatic and, while your applications will work and feel no different, your hard disk will have more free space available–and we're talking gigabytes with many systems!
What if something goes wrong?
No worries! Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder has undergone extensive testing and comes with a failsafe: A backup is created prior to every system modification so you can revert it in a matter of seconds. All files will then be restored to their original locations and everything will work fine again. In addition, you can also permanently exclude the affected files from deletion the next time you scan your machine with Ashampoo Duplicate File Finder.
