Brooks Younce Duplicate File Finder – light portable utility

My install packages organization is in frightening order lately. Still I was looking through stuff to check out and found extra copy of SpeedFan. I keep images in order with VisiPics but have used no tool for binary duplicates in years.

Few searches (through Opera bookmarks, Google and Portable Freeware Collection) later I ended up with Duplicate File Finder – tiny and portable utility to look for binary identical files. One of many with such name by the way, in this case by Brooks Younce Software.

What it does

As many of its kind app goes through files and looks for those that are same. This one makes binary matches so won’t care about file type, only exact binary content. There is also fast mode that will only compare first and last 10MB of file.

Search scope is determined by adding paths and for each of those file mask can be specified as well. The way that results are shown is a bit cramped. According to app logic it focuses on determining first (or last) of copies and treat it like original.

Strong features

• flexible scope of search;
• good logic of fast mode for large files;
• small footprint and snappy performance.

Needs and wants

For my taste app is too focused on dates. I would be more interested in finding files that are large and eat space, rather than tiny irrelevant ones.

As usual I have to warn that deleting duplicates without careful consideration is highly destructive and potentially troublesome. Some kind of backup would be really useful in this utility.

Overall

There are more impressive apps for duplicate search around, but this one works for me by being fast, efficient, single-executable and natively portable.

Home&download http://www.brooksyounce.com/soft/dupfinder.htm