What’s the best program for removing duplicate files?

QI have been an avid reader of Computeractive for some years. I remember reading about programs for dealing with duplicate files, but now I can’t find them in my old magazines. Could you help? Alan Blackburn

AThe program you remember may be ‘Duplicate & Same Files Searcher’ ( www.snipca.com/22788), which I mentioned briefly on this page in Issue 465. It’s worth a look, but there’s now a much better contender – Alldup ( www.snipca.com/22787). This superb program is completely free (and junk-free) and treats your files with respect. It’s powerful and fast, but it doesn’t automatically remove any duplicates until you’ve doublechecked them and given it the go-ahead.

Alldup guides you through three main steps: ‘Select source folder’, ‘Search method’ and then ‘Start search’. Search methods include duplicated file names, size, contents, date and more, and you can choose one or more of these criteria when searching. Then you review the duplicates, tick those you want to remove, and finally select ‘Remove all selected files from the search result’ in the Remove menu. It’s the most useful file-management program I’ve tested for some time, and I’ll take a closer look at it in Best Free Software when it has its next big update.

To get Alldup, click Download and then click ‘Server #1’ or ‘Server #2’, then save and run the installer (‘Alldupsetup. exe’). During setup, tick ‘Add Alldup to the Windows Explorer context menu’. This lets you right-click any folder and select ‘Alldup – search for same’ to find duplicates, without having to launch the Alldup program.