Duplicate File Detective Help
The Duplicate File Detective Project Wizard is designed to provide you with a quick starting point for duplicate file searches.
Start the Project Wizard by clicking the appropriate button in the application Ribbon Bar.
Step 1 - File Matching
The first screen of the wizard helps you to define the type of scan to execute. There are several types.
•Quick Search - Searches the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file name, extension and size. This provides quick results with a fair degree of accuracy. We strongly recommend that you review duplicate search results extra carefully when using this option.
•Checksum Search - Searches the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file name, extension, size and 128-bit content checksum. Quick, with a good degree of accuracy.
•Strong Checksum Search - Searches the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file extension, size and 256-bit content checksum. Slower, with a very strong degree of accuracy, and does not require that file names match (but does require that extensions match).
•Duplicate Song Search - Finds duplicate songs by analyzing the audio tags of supported music file formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, Speex, WavPack TrueAudio, WAV, AIFF, MP4 and ASF.
To select a one of the file matching methods listed above, click the checkbox indicator adjacent its name. Then click the Next button.
Step 2 - Search Paths
The next screen of the Project Wizard allows you to determine which file system paths should be searched for duplicate files. You will be presented a file system tree (on the left) that shows available drives and folders (similar to Windows Explorer), and a listing of search paths (on the right).
To include a drive or folder in the search, select it in the file system browser pane and click the right-pointing blue arrow button.
The Search Paths editor on the right is also a full-fledged path editor; you can use its toolbar buttons to add, edit, or re-order paths that appear in this pane. For example, you can click the New toolbar button in the Search Paths editor and enter a fully qualified UNC network path (e.g. "\\computer\share").
Add as many paths as you require during this step in the project wizard, then click Next.
Step 3 - File Types
The Project Wizard file types screen allows you to specify precisely what kinds of files should be included in the duplicate search process. For example, if you'd like the duplicate search to include only certain types of multimedia files, you can do so here.
The default values on this screen are determined automatically based upon the project type specified in Step 1 (above).
The file types input field uses Duplicate File Detective's filename masking system, which supports both wildcards and regular expressions.
Click Next to proceed.
Step 4 - Results Report
This step of the Project Wizard allows you to specify which data columns will be visible within the final duplicate search results report.
The default values on this screen are determined automatically based upon the project type specified in Step 1 (above). Please note that you can always change the visibility of columns within the duplicate search results report later.
Click Next to proceed.
Step 5 - Ready to Begin
Duplicate File Detective is now ready to begin scanning for duplicates! Click the Finish button, and watch as Duplicate File Detective goes to work!
Note that, depending upon selections made in previous steps (and the size of the file system paths being scanned), the duplicate file identification process can be fairly time consuming. Once you've got the basics down, learn how to use Search Filtering to limit the files being compared, which can accelerate the process considerably.
Now click Finish to start your duplicate file search.
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