You can instead use a third-party duplicate file scanning program to find identical files on an external hard drive without having to search through folders.

Bottom Line Easy-to-use Duplicate File Finder did a good job of distinguishing actual duplicate files from close matches and false positives.

Easy Duplicate Finder is a feature-rich duplicate file detector that can keep your file chaos under control. Though powerful, it's expensive and sometimes buggy.

Dissy is a free disk space analyzer and visualizer tool for Windows 11/10 PC that lets you find, remove duplicate files, manage storage, etc.

Use Fast Duplicate File Finder, though, and you’ll beable to find duplicate files with ease, and keep your hard disk intip-top shape.

Duplicate files can cause all kinds of problems on your computer, taking up precious storage room, confusing your photo or media manager apps, and generally getting in the way of searches and ...

Mac: Gemini, our favorite duplicate file finder for Mac, got a big update today that modernizes the interface and improves the file scanning algorithm so it can find more duplicate files even when ...

Ignore lists Where It Excels Gemini is easily the fastest duplicate file finder we tested on OS X, which alone is a great feature if you’re looking for duplicates pretty often.

Some files on a Linux system can appear in more than one location. Follow these instructions to find and identify these "identical twins" and learn why hard links can be so advantageous.