How to Use Duplicate Cleaner

About Duplicate Cleaner

Duplicate Cleaner is a new feature in MiniTool Partition Wizard that helps you detect and remove duplicate files stored across your PC and external drives.

Over time, repeated downloads, accidental copies, and backup redundancies can occupy large amounts of storage. By scanning and identifying unnecessary duplicates, this tool helps you reclaim disk space, organize your files, and maintain efficient storage usage.

This guide explains how to configure, run, and manage scans using Duplicate Cleaner.

How to Use Duplicate Cleaner

Step 1. Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to enter its main interface.

Step 2. Select the Duplicate Cleaner feature on the top toolbar.

Step 3. In the following interface, configure the scan settings, including location and file type.

1. Scan Location: By default, all detected partitions with drive letters are displayed, including those on internal drives, external drives, USB flash drives, and other supported storage devices.

• Click the Add icon to add partitions or folders.
• Click the Remove icon to remove the selected partition or folders.

2. Excluded: Certain system folders (e.g., C:\Windows, C:\boot, and C:\Program Files) are automatically excluded to prevent accidental deletion of critical files. Additional partitions or folders can be added or removed as needed.

3. Protected: Some important folders or partitions can be marked as protected. Files there are scanned but will appear as locked on the results page and cannot be deleted. Protected folders or partitions can be added or removed according to requirements.

4. Filter: All file types are scanned by default, or specific categories can be selected, such as pictures, videos, audio, documents, or archives. Duplicate Cleaner supports most common file formats, ensuring no important files are missed.

Under All Files, the Include section is not editable because the scan covers all file types by default. *.* represent any filename and file type.

Certain file types are excluded by default to protect system and virtual disk files. These files will not be scanned or deleted. The Exclude list can be customized if needed, but changing it may affect scan results.

Use Advanced Settings to adjust file size limit, choose the hash comparison method, and set file protection options for a more precise scan.

1. Minimum/Maximum file size: Set the range of file sizes to scan.

2. Comparison method: Choose between two hash algorithms, MD5 (default) and SHA-1. MD5 is fast and suitable for everyday scenarios, while SHA-1 offers higher accuracy and is recommended when handling important files.

3. File protection:

• Partially hash files bigger than: Use partial hash comparison for large files to speed up scanning.
• Compare files with identical extensions: Only search for duplicate files with the same extension.
• Skip system files: Exclude critical system files from scanning.
• Skip hidden folders: Do not scan hidden folders.
• Ignore hard links for identical files: Prevent counting hard links as duplicates.

Once the scan settings are configured, click Scan Now.

Step 4. Wait for the process to complete. The duration may vary depending on the number of partitions and files being scanned.

Step 5. After scanning, the results show all duplicate files with their size and quantity.

Filter by file type to quickly view duplicates in specific categories, such as pictures, video, audio, documents, or archives.

Click Expand All to view the full path of all duplicated files for easier inspection and selection, and Collapse All to hide the paths, showing only filenames.

Sort files in this section by name, size, or quantity to easily identify and manage duplicates.

Step 6. To select the duplicate file to remove, the Smart Select button is provided. It includes multiple selection methods:

1. Auto Select: Exclude the oldest file, keeping only the original.

2. Invert Selection: Reverses the current selection of duplicates.

3. Select by Date Modified/Created: Choose the oldest or newest files by modification or creation date.

4. Select by File Name/Path Length: Choose files with the longest or shortest name/path within each group.

5. File Name/Path Match: Select files matching specific patterns.

• *.jpg: all JPG files; *bmp: all BMP files.
• a?b.png: filename starting with “a” and ends with “b”. Where ? represents any single character (e.g., a1b.png).
• * represents any number of characters; ? represents exactly one character.

Step 7. After selecting duplicate files to remove, click the Deleted Selected Files button and choose one of the following options:

1. Move the selected files to the Recycle Bin: Selected files will be moved to the Recycle Bin and can be restored permanently deleted.

2. Free up space by deleting the selected files while keeping links to the retained files: Duplicate files are deleted, and links are created to the retained copies. This saves disk space while maintaining access to the original files in their locations.

• For duplicate files on the same NTFS drive, hard links will be created. A hard link is like a mirror of the original file on the same drive. It takes almost no extra space and behaves like the original file. However, copying a hard-linked file creates a new, independent file that does take up space.
• For duplicate files on different NTFS/ReFS drives, symbolic links will be created. A symbolic link is like a shortcut pointing to the original file on another NTFS or ReFS drive. It does not duplicate the file but lets you access it from its original location. If the original file is deleted, the symbolic link remains but cannot be opened because its target no longer exists.

3. Delete the selected files permanently: Selected files are permanently removed. Type YES to confirm.

Once the desired delete option is selected, click OK. Duplicate Cleaner will proceed to delete the duplicate files according to your selection.