Can WinDirStat Find Duplicate Files? 101 Key Take

When working with files on your computer, you would almost certainly encounter duplicate files. Duplicate files are frustrating, they are taking the space on your computer (or external storage) and adding mess to your machine, and making it less healthy while it is time-consuming and tiring to find the duplicates manually to delete. Users download software applications (e.g. WinDirStat) and check disk usage and maximize free space. One of the most frequently asked questions that comes up is, Can WinDirStat find duplicate files? So, let's delve into that question and see if in fact, WinDirStat is the best tool to find & delete duplicate files, or if we might have better alternatives to use!

What is WinDirStat?

WinDirStat is a well known (famous) disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Windows. It shows disk usage statistics as treemaps colored based on usage to quickly show the user where to focus on clearing up disk space. WinDirStat is great for the overview of which files the disk space is occupied, but many people tend to ask the question: Can WinDirStat find duplicate files? The bad news is that, nope, WinDirStat has no built-in functionality to search for file duplicates, being designed to figure out disk space usage and not comparing file contents or metadata.

Why Can’t WinDirStat Find Duplicate Files?

Returning to the question of how WinDirStat can locate duplicate data, the short response is "no" which means examining the workings of the program. WinDirStat scans your drives and lets you see exactly what kind of files are taking up the most space. It also provides a simple colored treemap representation of it, where you can quickly locate where the large files or folders reside. However, a duplicate file finder goes through each of these files to compare their hashes (the most reliable), their names, and their sizes (less reliable, and their content (in some cases). WinDirStat does not perform such tasks, because it does not have algorithms that can find and delete duplicate photos. Hence, these processes are out of the scope of WinDirStat.

Steps to Use WinDirStat for Disk Space Management

Although WinDirStat does not provide making duplicate file-finder, yet it helps a lot in effective disk management with the following processes:

Download and Install WinDirStat:

The download link is for the latest version of WinDirStat from the official site. Then, it means you will have the installation instructions and to follow while you will be installing it on your PC.

Launch the Application:

Launch WinDirStat and find the drive or folder you wish to examine.

Wait for WisdomTree to Complete the Scan:

This will take a while based on the size of your drive and likely up to an hour to scan normal drives.

Analyze the Treemap:

Using its treemap view, you get a full overview of your disk usage in one glance: big blocks of space represent big files/folders, and small blocks represent small ones.

Delete Unwanted Files:

To clear up some space in your hard drive, you would right click on an unwanted file/folder, and have the option "Delete".

While these may not answer on the can WinDirStat find duplicate files, all will help you declutter your system from junk.

Alternatives to WinDirStat for Finding Duplicate Files

If you look for something that can detect duplicate files, you look for a dedicated tool that is designed to do that, So one of the tools can be SysTools Duplicate File Finder which is great utility to scan and manage duplicate files from the system. In a more efficient manner than WinDirStat, which only performs a visual analysis of files, it uses a method designed to find duplicates through file hashing, name, size, and content over a very large scale, if duplicates are discovered.

Important Features of the Automated Tool:

• Deep Search: It searches for everything including documents, images, videos, music, etc.

• Creative Filters: Filter duplicates using size, date or type.

• Preview Files: Allow preview of Files prior to deletion

• It saves you from the mistake of deleting files during the tricky part of file removal.

If you have the issue that be solved by win dir stat but cannot, then this professional application is what you need to solve your problem cannot be performed by win dir stat shortcoming like rpetitive files in your computer system then you will you must use this amazing software being the best solution for the WinDir stat.

How does it work?

However, here is a step by step guide to using the professional software:

Downloading and installing the Software:

Go to their official website and download the Duplicate File Finder Tool. Follow the install guide.

Open the Software:

Now, launch it and choose the drives or folders that you want to scan for duplicate files.

Begin the Scanning Process:

Press the Scan button and it will begin to scan the requested locations. The software is to compare files and identify duplicates.

Review Results:

After scanning enter the identical document listing. You may be able to see a preview of what the contents.

Delete Duplicates:

Next select the items you want deleted and hit Delete. With this software, you can permanently delete the files without leaving any other copies.

With this newly christened smart tool, you may cease to ponder can WinDirStat discover duplicate files, as shortly this native software program does simply that — excels at duplicate recognition and deletion.

Comparing WinDirStat and SysTools Duplicate File Finder

However, the tool in question is similar in nature, with very different use cases, having the same goal of freeing disk storage from repeated files. WinDirStat is focused on visualization and exploration of your storage but SysTools Duplicate File Finder was designed specifically for deduplication. So, it is safe to state that it is not a duplicate finder just like SysTools is not in a research period that strives for an answer to the question of whether or not WinDirStat can find duplicate files.

Final Words

Therefore, before going heavily into the conclusion — we can answer very shortly the question no, WinDirStat does not find duplicate files. However, WinDirStat is a pretty nifty application to see how you are using your disk space, however, it wasn't designed (yet) for searching for duplicate files. If you are still looking for that silver bullet, that one single answer to your Google search that got you here, look no further than SysTools Duplicate File Finder – your new best friend. By using these 2 great tools you would be able to optimize your disk space management and keep your system organized without clutter.