Best utility to find duplicate folders / directories in Windows 10
November 18, 2019 6:59 AM   Subscribe

My digital archives are a huge mess, with many instances of entire folders (and sub-folders) being duplicated. I feel like my de-duplication efforts would be inefficient if I started by focusing on file-level duplicates. Instead, I'd like to begin by identifying and deleting duplicate folders / directories.

I have four hard drives (all connected to my Windows 10 PC), and the duplicated folders are scattered among the four drives. I'd like to find some utility that will help me identify duplicate folders at the top-most level of the duplicated tree, so I can delete the entire duplicated tree, rather than the individual sub-folders under it.

Does such a tool exist? When I run Google searches to look for de-duplication utilities, they all seem to be geared at finding duplicate files rather than folders. Finding duplicate files is going to be step two in my process, but I don't want to start there.

I'm willing to pay some reasonable amount of money (say, $50 or less) for a suitable utility, if someone can recommend one.
posted by akk2014 to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Not available for Windows but rmlint has an option for deduplicating directories. Give it a shot if you can dual-boot.

Deduping directories, and duplicate finders in general, are an excellent way to shoot oneself in the foot, though. Have backups ready if some of the files are important.
posted by Bangaioh at 7:53 AM on November 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Beyond Compare would probably help you out here even if it does not do exactly what you want. It is great at ensuring directories are synced up, for example.

I feel like my de-duplication efforts would be inefficient if I started by focusing on file-level duplicates.
It depends on how you are performing the deletion. Most duplicate detectors will handle the file deletion for you. Then you can also run a utility that can delete empty folders (Remove Empty Directories is the one I use).
posted by soelo at 10:13 AM on November 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


The closest thing I can think of if you don't find a specific program that does exactly the thing you want.

Find a 'Disk Usage' program that goes through your drives and makes a list of every folder and how much space it is using. Then you can get that list of folders and sizes into a spreadsheet or something and sort by the size. Then you just need to scan through looking for 2 or more folders that have the same size. Those might be duplicates or just coincidences. But if the sizes are different, then they're not duplicates.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:18 PM on November 18, 2019


> Find a 'Disk Usage' program that...

I recommend the one I use: WinDirStat
posted by Homer42 at 2:18 PM on November 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


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