Download A portable, practical utility that makes it easier for users to find duplicate files in a given folder and dispose of them right away Free

Finding duplicate files may not sound like the most exciting thing to do, but if you want to be more efficient with your file management, you have to do what you have to do. Fortunately, software that automatically detects duplicate files exists to make life easier.

Scanning for duplicates based on file hashes is the most efficient method, and Dude (Duplicate Detector) is a simple and useful utility that helps users discover these files on their drives and process them immediately. The program is portable, which means there is no installation process required.

Detect duplicates

You must initially specify the folders in which you want the program to look. Thankfully, the scanning process happened without any lag for us, but your hardware may affect the speed of this step.

Regardless, it’s best to familiarize yourself with the interface before doing anything. The two-panel layout helps when working with your files, as the program will group any duplicate files it finds in the top panel, notifying you of the number of copies of a given file and its size.

Since it detects duplicates through file hashes, you may encounter two nearly identical files with different names. This means that the program successfully matched the corresponding hashes to duplicate files, so you don’t have to worry about deleting non-duplicate files.

Mark for deletion

Once you’ve gone through some duplicates, it’s time to flag them. This can be done by pressing the space bar on the relevant files, which will then be highlighted in red by the program. You will then be able to delete the marked files via the delete key.

You can also mark files as soft links or hard links via Insert and Shift+Insert hotkeys respectively.

All in all, Dude (DUplicates DEtector) is a portable, functional solution for duplicate finders that is very easy to operate once you get the hang of it.