Like many other people, I have a large quantity of files on my computer (particularly photographs from my digital camera). I am interested in a utility that can find and list duplicate files on the computer, so these can be removed to free-up hard drive space. This does not seem to be an easy task, so can you recommend any software that would meet this purpose?

The task which you wish to undertake is commonly known as deduplication, meaning that you wish to remove duplicate data from your computer in order to make more storage space available on the computer. There are a plethora of utilities available for this task and the majority of these can be found by completing a search for “find duplicate files” on Google. While there are a large amount of utilities, some free and some commercial, it is important to find a utility which will meet your needs. I have never used any such utilities, so it will be difficult for me to provide a specific recommendation on a utility. However, from the research I conducted there appears to be a utility which may meet your needs. Doubles (doubles.sourceforge.net) is a free, open-source utility for finding duplicate files on the computer. This will find files which have the same content, but not necessarily the same file name. For example, say that you have two copies of one photo. The first photo is named “birthdayparty1.jpg” and the second photo is named “mybirthdayparty.jpg”. Both photos are exactly the same, but only differ in name. Doubles will determine that both these photos are the same (even though they have different names). The search operating for duplicate files should also be relatively quick, as Doubles appears to use a relatively efficient algorithm for comparing the files. Once the duplicate file search has completed you can also take several actions, including deleting the duplicate files. This utility seems to meet your requirements, and has the added benefit of also being free and open-source.