Unique Filer

Like roaches, multimedia files on your computer seem to multiply and hide themselves into every corner of your hard drive. You download some pictures from the Web or usenet, grab some MP3's here and there, get some clipart for a Web site and so on. Before you know it that mighty hard drive of yours is begging for relief. There's no easy solution other than getting a larger drive, but you can improve your situation by using Unique Filer.

Unique Filer is a duplicate/clone finder that hunts down and eradicates multiple copies of the same multimedia format. It's the Raid Bug spray for dupe files. You select what folder(s) or drive(s) you want scanned and whether you want the subfolder within scanned as well. Unique Filer then uses one of three methods to detect duplicate files. This is done by comparing the filename and size, the filename and content, or by means of a fuzzy compare. The first two methods are fairly standard and work well for clearing out the majority of obvious dupes. Unfortunately what these two methods won't detect are images that are identical but have been slightly modified such as being resized, color corrected, resampled, etc.

This is when the fuzzy compare option comes into play. When doing a fuzzy compare, Unique Filer actually looks at the image itself and tries to match the general look and shape of the picture with another image contained in a database of your picture files. It then displays the results in a small thumbnail so you can determine for yourself if they are in fact the same. The fuzzy search isn't perfect (it will nail a number of mistaken matches) but it tends to be right roughly 85-90% of the time.