AllDup Portable for Windows

Duplicate files can take up a lot of valuable space on your hard drive, but it's not easy to find and get rid of them without a specialized tool. AllDup Portable is exactly that kind of tool, and it can be kept on a USB drive for on-the-go use. The program is packed with features, doing a thorough job of locating duplicate files and giving plenty of options for dealing with them.

The program opens with a screen where you can select which drives you want to scan for duplicates. There are plenty of options for customizing the search, such as selecting search criteria and creating filters, and selecting whether or not to scan archive files. Search criteria can be saved in profiles, making it easy to customize searches and then retrieve them for later use. Once you've designed a search that suits your needs, click Start Search, and the program goes to work.

AllDup scanned our hard drive in less than a minute and returned over 4,000 duplicates. The results screen includes numerous buttons that at first glance are a bit overwhelming, but mouse-over tooltips reveal that they're actually extremely simple tools for dealing with the plethora of duplicate file results. Duplicates are grouped into collapsible lists, and the program's many buttons let you select all files except the first or last in a group, all but the newest or oldest, all but the smallest or largest, and so on. Once you've selected the files you want to work with, just open AllDup's file manager, which lets you delete, copy, move, or rename the chosen files.

AllDup is an extremely versatile and powerful program, and we think it's a great choice for anyone who needs to clean up a hard drive. As with any such tool, however, we urge caution; AllDup Portable will locate duplicates, but deciding whether or not it's a good idea to delete them is still entirely up to you.

AllDup Portable comes as a ZIP file and is accessible after extraction with no need for installation.