Most of us are all too familiar with the anxiety that comes with slowly diminishing storage space. Between iTunes, work files, and photographs from the last family vacation, the seemingly vast amount of storage can fill up quick.
It might be a surprise however, to know that a silent, but deadly culprit responsible for a lack of space is duplicate files. Whether it be photos, audio files, videos or documents, it is easy to mistakenly download and store multiple copies of a file. Clogging up your system’s memory, these duplicate files can quickly eat up storage space and drastically slow down your device. Thankfully though, there exists a plethora of duplicate removers, and softwares, both free and paid, that can be utilized to efficiently clear out some precious storage space.
iTunes Duplicate Remover
When it comes to music, the most common culprit of duplicate files, iTunes itself contains a feature to quickly identify multiple copies of an audio file. Easily accessed on your mac while using the iTunes application, the built-in duplicate remover is a simple way to identify unwanted audio files taking up storage. Although useful when dealing with a few duplicates, cleaning out a large number of files in this manner can be tedious and time-consuming. Having to individually eliminate identical files means that this isn’t the most efficient way to deal with numerous duplicates.
This is where third party offerings come in. Whether free to download, or paid for, there are a number of effective solutions in the market that offer a quick cleaning and speeding-up. Chief among these, is the offering for Cisdem. The Cisdem Duplicate Finder is an easy-to-use, professionally created software that is free to download for the Mac and scans your iTunes to find duplicate songs and videos. The finder importantly allows you to mass select and delete duplicates with one click. The solution works well with multiple iTunes libraries and can also detect and delete other duplicate audios scattered across your hard drive.
A number of alternative duplicate finders can be easily downloaded, both for Windows and Mac. Though many may not be able to identify 100% of the duplicates on your device, they still offer an extremely competent and simple way to clean out your hard drive. These include Tune Sweeper, Dupe Away and TuneUp.
iTunes however, is only one side of the story. Duplicates can exists for any form of files on your device. Luckily, there is no shortage of solutions that can effectively scour your hard drive for identical files. As mentioned earlier, the Cisdem Duplicate Finder is capable of searching for multiple file types, whether it be photos, audios, videos, docs, packages and other duplicate files. The software is also capable of detecting images with an adjustable similarity level, and provides a preview mode, for side-by-side comparison. Other offerings include the Gemini 2, a renowned alternative with a user-friendly interface and quick scanning time, though it is memory hungry. It is also on the expensive side, at $19.95 per year. A number of incredibly competent alternatives are available, including Easy Duplicate Finder and Tidy Up.
In many cases, we are completely unaware of the vast amounts of storage needlessly taken up by duplicate files. A good duplicate finder is a quick, easy and often inexpensive way to give your device a boost and free up some space.
