Easy Duplicate Finder Review: Quickly Clean Up Your Hard Drive

Do you know how much space duplicate files are taking up on your hard drive? If you‘re like most people, the answer is probably "way too much". Between photos, music, documents and program files, it‘s extremely easy for duplicates to accumulate over time without even realizing it.

That‘s where a duplicate file finder utility like Easy Duplicate Finder comes in handy. It scans your hard drive and identifies all the duplicate files hiding in various folders, giving you the opportunity to clean them up and reclaim valuable disk space.

But is Easy Duplicate Finder the best tool for the job? I tested out the application extensively to see how it performs and stacks up to the competition. Read on for my detailed Easy Duplicate Finder review to find out if it‘s right for you.

What Is Easy Duplicate Finder?

As the name implies, Easy Duplicate Finder is a program that scans your computer for duplicate files and helps you remove them. It works on Windows PCs and Macs. The software can scan any drive or folder, including external and network drives.

In addition to looking for duplicate files, Easy Duplicate Finder has dedicated modes for finding duplicate contacts, emails, music (including your iTunes library), and photos. The goal is to be an all-in-one solution for cutting the clutter on your computer.

Easy Duplicate Finder‘s Main Features

Let‘s take a closer look at Easy Duplicate Finder‘s core features and how they performed in my testing:

Scan Files for Duplicates

This is Easy Duplicate Finder‘s bread and butter functionality. You select the drives and folders you want to scan, then let the program analyze them for duplicate files.

I tested it on my MacBook Air‘s 256GB drive which had about 120GB of data. The scan finished in just under 5 minutes – so it was very fast considering the amount of files. The results found over 2000 duplicates taking up about 4GB of space. Not bad!

What impressed me is how accurate the duplicate identification was. Easy Duplicate Finder compares more than just the file names – it looks at the actual content to verify they are indeed exact duplicates. In my tests, it didn‘t have any false positives.

Once the scan completes, you can review the duplicate files and select which copies to delete. There‘s an option to have Easy Duplicate Finder automatically delete all the duplicates while retaining the original file. In most cases, this worked perfectly. But I recommend reviewing the results to make sure you don‘t accidentally delete something important.

The one issue I had is that it doesn‘t find duplicate folders (only files inside of folders). So if you have two identical folders nested in different locations, you have to dig into each to clean up the files inside them. A folder-level scan option would be really helpful.

Scan Cloud Storage (Dropbox & Google Drive)

Easy Duplicate Finder can connect to your Dropbox and Google Drive accounts to find duplicate files in the cloud. I loved the idea of this, since I have tons of files in those services.

Unfortunately, it wasn‘t as useful as I hoped. The Dropbox and Google Drive scans took significantly longer than local hard drive scans (over an hour for my Google Drive!). And I found the results to be less accurate – it missed some obvious duplicates.

My recommendation would be to use this only if you don‘t already sync your cloud files to your computer. If you do, it‘s faster to just scan the local synced folder.

Compare Folders

Have two folders that you think might contain the same files? The Compare Folders mode lets you quickly analyze them for duplicates.

I tested this on two old backup folders I had. The scan only took a few seconds and accurately found a handful of duplicate files between the two locations.

It‘s a niche use case, but a handy option to have available. I can see it being useful for quickly comparing things like photo albums.

Scan Contacts & Emails

Easy Duplicate Finder can scan your address book and email mailboxes for duplicate contacts and messages. On paper, this sounds great. In practice, the results were mixed.

The contact scan worked decently well. It was very slow (it took nearly an hour to process 3000 contacts), but it did find a fair number of duplicates. The annoying thing is the limited options for handling the dupes. You can‘t actually merge the contact information – just choose to delete one or the other. I would have liked more flexibility here.

As for email scanning, it was largely a bust in my tests. After churning for a long time, it found a huge number of "duplicates" that weren‘t actually identical messages. It seems to match based on subject lines, not content or attachments. I didn‘t feel comfortable trusting Easy Duplicate Finder to delete any of them.

Scan Music & iTunes

If you have a large digital music collection, there‘s a good chance you‘ve got duplicate tracks and albums scattered around. Easy Duplicate Finder has a special music scan mode designed to find them. It can also scan your iTunes library if you use that.

The music scanning was hit or miss. It did find some genuine duplicates, but also matched things as dupes that weren‘t (like live and studio versions of the same song). You‘ll definitely want to carefully review the results before deleting anything.

Scanning iTunes was largely the same story, just slower. Frankly, iTunes has built-in features that can display duplicate tracks which I found more reliable.

Scan Photos

I was excited to try Easy Duplicate Finder‘s photo scan, since I have a huge library of digital photos going back nearly 20 years. Surely there would be tons of duplicates, right?

Unfortunately, I could never get it to actually work. Easy Duplicate Finder has an option to scan the Mac Photos library, but it never found a single picture or duplicate, even though I‘m certain they exist. I tried rebuilding the Photos library and rescanning, but still had no luck.

I contacted Easy Duplicate Finder‘s support about the photo scanning issue. Unfortunately, I never received a response after 5 days of waiting. Not a great customer service experience.

User Experience & Performance

Overall, Easy Duplicate Finder is fairly intuitive to use. The interface feels a bit dated, but it‘s easy enough to navigate the major functions. I liked that you could drill down and see a preview of found duplicates before choosing to delete them.

In terms of performance, the standard file scans were blazing fast in my testing. Easy Duplicate Finder cranked through my 256GB MacBook Air drive in about 5 minutes. Scanning my larger iMac drive (2TB with about 600GB of data) took around 20 minutes, which still feels quite snappy.

The dedicated modes for things like contacts and music were much slower by comparison. I think this is because they use different comparison algorithms that are more resource intensive.

As I mentioned in the feature run-down, the accuracy was excellent for the file scans, but spottier for the special modes. I wouldn‘t necessarily trust Easy Duplicate Finder as the sole tool for de-duping contacts, emails, or music. Use it in combination with other options for the best results.

Pricing

A single computer license for Easy Duplicate Finder costs $39.95. That puts it on the higher end of the spectrum compared to other duplicate file finders. For example, Gemini 2 for Mac is $19.95 and Auslogics Duplicate File Finder for Windows is free.

Whether that price is justified depends on how much you‘ll use the extra features beyond the core file scanning. If you just need to zap file duplicates, there are cheaper options that work just as well. But if you want an all-in-one tool that can tackle contacts, music, photos, etc. then Easy Duplicate Finder may be worth the premium.

The good news is that the free trial version lets you scan and preview all the duplicates before you decide to buy. So you can make sure it meets your needs before pulling out your wallet.

Alternatives to Easy Duplicate Finder

There‘s no shortage of duplicate file finder utilities out there. Here are a few of the top alternatives I would recommend checking out:

• Gemini 2 (Mac): This is my personal favorite duplicate cleaner for Mac. It‘s a bit more modern than Easy Duplicate Finder and I found it faster for scanning things like photos and music. The only downside is that it can‘t scan contacts or email.
• dupeGuru (Windows/Mac/Linux): This is a free, open-source duplicate file finder. It‘s very fast and accurate, though not quite as user-friendly as the paid options. But if you‘re on a budget, it gets the job done.
• Auslogics Duplicate File Finder (Windows): This is a popular free option for Windows users. It covers the basics of duplicate file scanning, though it lacks some of Easy Duplicate Finder‘s advanced options. Still, a solid choice for most people.

Bottom Line

Easy Duplicate Finder is a decent choice for reclaiming space on your hard drive, especially if you want a one-stop-shop for all kinds of duplicate scanning. The file search functionality is top-notch in terms of speed and accuracy. And the $39.95 price tag, while not cheap, is reasonable if you‘ll use the extra features.

That said, most people will be fine with a more basic (and affordable) duplicate file cleaner. I‘d only splurge for Easy Duplicate Finder if you really need things like the contact/email/music modes. And even those didn‘t wow me compared to other options.

The lack of responsiveness from customer support also makes me hesitate to give a glowing recommendation. I think most people will be better served by alternatives like Gemini 2 or Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.

Still, if Easy Duplicate Finder ticks all the boxes for your specific needs, it‘s a solid performer for general file duplicate scanning. Start with the free trial to see how it works for your computer before buying.