The Duplicate File Detective Project Wizard is designed to provide you with a quick starting point for duplicate file scans.
Start the Project Wizard by clicking the appropriate toolbar button (
) .
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 Duplicate Scan - scans the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file name and size. This provides quick results with a fair degree of accuracy. |
| • | Checksum Duplicate Scan - scans the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file name, size and 32-bit CRC content checksum. Quick, with a good degree of accuracy. |
| • | Strong Checksum Duplicate Scan - scans the selected drive(s) or folder(s) for duplicates that match by file size and 128-bit MD5 content checksum (without regard to file names). Slower, with a very strong degree of accuracy. |
To select a one of the file matching methods listed above, click the blue hyperlink text associated with the name.
Step 2 - Scan Paths
The next screen of the Project Wizard allows you to determine which file system paths should be scanned for duplicate files. You will be presented with two panes - a file system browser (on the left) that shows available drives and folders (similar to the presentation in Windows Explorer), and another pane (on the right) that lists directories to be scanned.
To select a drive or folder for scanning, simply select it in the file system browser pane and click the right blue arrow button (
).
The Directories pane 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.
Add as many paths as you like during this step in the project wizard.
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 scan process. For example, if you'd like the duplicate scan to include only certain types of multimedia files, you can do so here.
The file types input field uses Duplicate File Detective's filename masking system, which supports both wildcards and regular expressions.
Step 4 - 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.
See also: