Duplicate file management; double your hard drive space

Japanese are very fond of using 5S technique (locating and sorting usable stuff from waste ones), any manufacturing plant I visited whether its Honda or Toyota, I always found big posters and quotes, highlighting 5S definition, usage and benefits, here I must admit, I am really bad at 5S and my laptop is a clear example of that, there were so many duplicate files, even my system indicated “Its enough for me”, at that point I was left with option of

• Increasing hard drive space and RAM
• Locate duplicate files and remove them from system.

I found second option to be cheaper and long lasting and my hunt begin for some good duplicate file finder (freeware definitely).

File management software

I tagged two of them as great out of so many available on web.

1) Duplicate Finder 2009

Developer- Duplicate Finder 2009, the most advance and efficient disc clean up utility to find and remove duplicate files on your local computer or computer network (vista supported). The efficiency of this tool is because of its amazing features; this tool has ability to work with multiple disks and drives at the same time. It compare folders and files byte to byte thus filtering them by names, size, date and attributes. And a built in feature to exclude subfolders, an ability to save search criteria, tools provided for safe deletion of duplicate files to recycle bin. It provides full support to FAT, FAT-32, and NTFS format partitions. This tool with unmatched simplicity, power and speed has been made as a solution for your business or personal needs in a network. Software saves not only space on your hard drives; it also saves time on the drive clean up process.

Slym– This program offers one of the best cleanup solutions. With it you can easily locate clone files and mark, rename or delete them forever. You can customize file search by file types (e.g. MP3, JPEG) or folder locations. One of the best features of the program is quick image preview, which allows you to actually see what you’re deleting.

Download here

2) Fast Duplicate file finder

Developer- Fast Duplicate File Finder will help you find fast all duplicate files in a folder and its sub folders. The applications will compare the content of your files so it will find duplicates even if they are using different file names.
It uses fast binary comparison algorithm and has internal preview supporting a lot of image, video, music and text file formats. You can also preview the files in binary mode. When the file search process is finished the program shows you all duplicate files in groups and can automatically mark the older files for deletion.

Slym– This is among the best file management software in the category and comes with recommendation from reputed lifehacker.com, although program is available for windows only.

Download here

Benefits of Duplicate file finder

• Identify and recover wasted hard drive clean space.
• Reducing time and media used for backups.
• Minimize time used to unneeded virus scanning.
• Increase free space on "limited" resources, like laptops and memory disks

Have you faced similar problem? Share, what all initiatives you have taken to solve the problem…