Overview

Why was CloneSpy written?

Do you often download files from the Internet? Is your hard drive crowded with these files? Have you ever asked yourself which files you have downloaded more than once? Perhaps you have burned files to a CD and retrieved them again? Do you want to find these files and eliminate the duplicates? Maybe you want to find duplicate files without checking your entire collection of backup CDs every time? Then CloneSpy is the right tool for you!

What can CloneSpy do?

CloneSpy can help you free up hard drive space by detecting and removing duplicate files. Duplicate files have exactly the same contents regardless of their name, date, time and location. Also, CloneSpy is able to find files that are not exactly identical, but have the same file name. Perhaps you have different versions of a file and you want to find all of them and remove the older versions. CloneSpy can also find zero length files. These are files that have no content.

With CloneSpy you can process files which

• are duplicates
• are duplicates and have the same file name
• have the same file name
• have the same file name and (approximately) the same size
• are zero bytes long

CloneSpy offers you a complete mechanism for determining which duplicate or same-name files should be removed. It is also possible to leave this decision up to the individual user.

CloneSpy can handle equal files by

• deleting redundant files
• moving redundant files to a specific folder
• exporting a list of all equal files without removing any files
• deferring file operations on redundant files to a batch file where you can apply arbitrary file operations

With CloneSpy you can build checksum files from files on CDs (or even on hard drives, etc.) and use them to check whether these files already exist on your system. The checksum files will prevent you from having to play DJ every time you search for duplicates!

If you are using CloneSpy for the first time, please take the time to read the Important Note and the Quick Start section.