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<li class="toctree-l1 current has-children"><a class="reference internal" href="file-search.html">Using File Search</a><input aria-label="Toggle navigation of Using File Search" checked="" class="toctree-checkbox" id="toctree-checkbox-7" name="toctree-checkbox-7" role="switch" type="checkbox"/><label for="toctree-checkbox-7"><span class="icon"><svg><use href="#svg-arrow-right"></use></svg></span></label><ul class="current">
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="file_search_main_menu.html">File Search Ribbon Bar</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="file_search_searchpaths.html">Search paths</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2 has-children"><a class="reference internal" href="basicsearch.html">Basic search</a><input aria-label="Toggle navigation of Basic search" class="toctree-checkbox" id="toctree-checkbox-8" name="toctree-checkbox-8" role="switch" type="checkbox"/><label for="toctree-checkbox-8"><span class="icon"><svg><use href="#svg-arrow-right"></use></svg></span></label><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="searchsyntax.html">Search syntax</a></li>
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<li class="toctree-l2 current has-children current-page"><a class="current reference internal" href="#">Duplicate file search</a><input aria-label="Toggle navigation of Duplicate file search" checked="" class="toctree-checkbox" id="toctree-checkbox-9" name="toctree-checkbox-9" role="switch" type="checkbox"/><label for="toctree-checkbox-9"><span class="icon"><svg><use href="#svg-arrow-right"></use></svg></span></label><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="example_duplicatesearch.html">How does the duplicate search work?</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="deduplication.html">How does the deduplication work?</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l2 has-children"><a class="reference internal" href="custom_file_search.html">Advanced search</a><input aria-label="Toggle navigation of Advanced search" class="toctree-checkbox" id="toctree-checkbox-10" name="toctree-checkbox-10" role="switch" type="checkbox"/><label for="toctree-checkbox-10"><span class="icon"><svg><use href="#svg-arrow-right"></use></svg></span></label><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="searchfilter_definition.html">How do I define search filters?</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="availablefiltertypes.html">What types of filters are available?</a></li>
</ul>
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<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="filesearch_templates.html">File search templates</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="howtoexcludefiles.html">How to exclude files</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="process_search_results.html">Process search results</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2 has-children"><a class="reference internal" href="move_checked_files.html">Move checked files</a><input aria-label="Toggle navigation of Move checked files" class="toctree-checkbox" id="toctree-checkbox-11" name="toctree-checkbox-11" role="switch" type="checkbox"/><label for="toctree-checkbox-11"><span class="icon"><svg><use href="#svg-arrow-right"></use></svg></span></label><ul>
<li class="toctree-l3"><a class="reference internal" href="unicode_zip_files.html">Unicode ZIP files</a></li>
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<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="renamedialog.html">Mass renaming files</a></li>
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<article role="main" id="furo-main-content">
<section id="duplicate-file-search">
<h1>Duplicate file search<a class="headerlink" href="#duplicate-file-search" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h1>
<p>The duplicate file search searches for duplicate files on the selected drives or shares.</p>
<p>In this context, duplicate files are files which seem to exist more than once. Such redundant files increase the allocated space of your disks unnecessarily.</p>
<a class="reference internal image-reference" href="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_DuplicateFiles.png"><img alt="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_DuplicateFiles.png" class="align-center" src="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_DuplicateFiles.png" style="width: 100%;" />
</a>
<section id="context-tab">
<h2>Context tab<a class="headerlink" href="#context-tab" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h2>
<section id="search-mode">
<h3>Search Mode<a class="headerlink" href="#search-mode" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h3>
<p>Select one of three modes of the duplicates search. You can search for duplicate files, duplicate folders, or files that do not have any duplicates.</p>
<section id="duplicate-files">
<h4>Duplicate Files<a class="headerlink" href="#duplicate-files" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Searches for files that are duplicates of each other, using the selected comparison method.</p>
</section>
<section id="duplicate-folders">
<h4>Duplicate Folders<a class="headerlink" href="#duplicate-folders" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Searches for folders that are duplicates of each other. Two folders are considered duplicates, if they contain the same amount of subfolders and files. These subfolders and files also have to be equal to each other, in regards to the selected comparison method.</p>
</section>
<section id="unique-files">
<h4>Unique Files<a class="headerlink" href="#unique-files" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>This setting searches for files that do not have any duplicates across the selected search paths.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="comparison-method">
<h3>Comparison method<a class="headerlink" href="#comparison-method" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h3>
<p>Defines which criteria should be used to identify files as duplicates. Here is a list of the available strategies:</p>
<section id="file-content">
<h4>File Content<a class="headerlink" href="#file-content" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>This option uses MD5 checksums for comparison by default.</p>
<p>When using this method, a so called hash value is calculated based on the contents of each file. Files with the same content will have the same hash value, files with different content will almost certainly have different values. Empty files are ignored, since there is no content to compare.</p>
<p>This is more accurate than comparing files by their name, size and date but it is also much slower.</p>
<p>Within the file search options, it is possible to adjust this method to use SHA256 hashes instead. The SHA256 algorithm further reduces the statistical risk of hash collisions compared to MD5 but it is also significantly slower. This option is only visible when using the expert application mode.</p>
</section>
<section id="size-name-and-date">
<h4>Size, Name and Date<a class="headerlink" href="#size-name-and-date" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Select this option to identify duplicate files by looking for equal names, sizes and last change dates.</p>
<p>This is much faster than using check sums to indicate duplicates, but it is also less accurate.</p>
</section>
<section id="name-and-size">
<h4>Name and Size<a class="headerlink" href="#name-and-size" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Select this option to identify duplicate files by looking for equal names and sizes.</p>
<p>Equal to the very first compare criteria, but without regarding the “last modified” time stamp of the files.</p>
<p>This is helpful in case files had been moved from one location to another, which might modify this time stamp.</p>
</section>
<section id="name">
<h4>Name<a class="headerlink" href="#name" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Select this option to find all files with equal file names.</p>
<p>This compare type can be helpful when you are searching for undesired copies (e.g. documents which have been copied and modified locally).</p>
</section>
<section id="name-without-extension">
<h4>Name without Extension<a class="headerlink" href="#name-without-extension" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Select this option to detect files with equal names, without regarding the file extension.</p>
<p>This can be interesting in case you are searching for duplicated backup files or e.g. row-data and compact image or video files (“MyPhoto.bmp” - “MyPhoto.png”).</p>
</section>
<section id="size-and-date">
<h4>Size and Date<a class="headerlink" href="#size-and-date" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Compares files according to their size and date values. This allows for a faster, but therefore less accurate search for duplicate files with different names. Accidental copies with names such as “Copy of …” can be identified quickly, using this method.</p>
</section>
<section id="size-only">
<h4>Size only<a class="headerlink" href="#size-only" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Select this option to find all files with equal size.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="search-filters">
<h3>Search Filters<a class="headerlink" href="#search-filters" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h3>
<p>Additional options to customize the duplicate file search:</p>
<section id="exclude-filter">
<h4>Exclude filter<a class="headerlink" href="#exclude-filter" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>Allows to activate, deactivate or customize the global exclude filters for this search.</p>
<p>By restricting the duplicate search to a specific preselection of files, you can prevent listing files of certain directories (e.g. your local system directories) as duplicates. Additionally, this option will reduce the number of files to compare, which improves the speed of the search.</p>
</section>
<section id="ignore-ntfs-hardlinks">
<h4>Ignore NTFS hardlinks<a class="headerlink" href="#ignore-ntfs-hardlinks" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h4>
<p>If this option is activated, hardlinks are not regarded as file duplicates. Note: NTFS hardlinks do not allocate memory. Therefore, deleting them does not make additional memory available. In addition, TreeSize uses hard links for deduplication.</p>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section id="deduplicate">
<h2>Deduplicate<a class="headerlink" href="#deduplicate" title="Link to this heading">¶</a></h2>
<p>Use the “Operations > Deduplicate” button to replace all but one checked duplicate files by NTFS hardlinks (<a class="reference internal" href="deduplication.html#deduplication"><span class="std std-ref">How does the deduplication work?</span></a>)</p>
<a class="reference internal image-reference" href="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_Duplicates_Deduplicate.png"><img alt="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_Duplicates_Deduplicate.png" class="align-center" src="_images/TreeSize-FileSearch_Duplicates_Deduplicate.png" style="width: 100%;" />
</a>
<p>In the configuration window you can select a log file to log the performed replacements to. You can also define how TreeSize will handle files located on different hard disks.</p>
<p>You can either replace files located on the same hard disk with hardlinks separately or simply select a reference drive and replace all files located on other hard disks with symbolic links.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>In case the permission to create symbolic links can not be granted, a Windows shortcut (.LNK file) will be created instead as fallback.</p>
</div>
<p>The context menu of the duplicate files list offers a feature named “Replace duplicates by hardlinks”.</p>
<p>This function works just like the “Deduplicate” function, but will handle all selected files instead of checked files.</p>
<div class="toctree-wrapper compound">
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="example_duplicatesearch.html">How does the duplicate search work?</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="deduplication.html">How does the deduplication work?</a></li>
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<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Duplicate file search</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#context-tab">Context tab</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#search-mode">Search Mode</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#duplicate-files">Duplicate Files</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#duplicate-folders">Duplicate Folders</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#unique-files">Unique Files</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#comparison-method">Comparison method</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#file-content">File Content</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#size-name-and-date">Size, Name and Date</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#name-and-size">Name and Size</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#name">Name</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#name-without-extension">Name without Extension</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#size-and-date">Size and Date</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#size-only">Size only</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#search-filters">Search Filters</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#exclude-filter">Exclude filter</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#ignore-ntfs-hardlinks">Ignore NTFS hardlinks</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#deduplicate">Deduplicate</a></li>
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