            Find Duplicates - discover duplicated files

Find Duplicates was written to allow you to control your disk space usage
by discovering files that are duplicated and, should you so wish, deleting
one or more of these duplicates.  There are many ways in which duplicate 
files can be deposited on your hard disk, for example programs which 
don't check to see if you have a particular DLL installed and install 
their own private copy in any case, or other programs that install a DLL
in your \Windows directory when it is already in \Windows\System32.

Find Duplicates scans one or more disks on your system to find multiple 
files, in a two-phase process.  First it scans all the directories and sorts 
all the files it finds into size order (files HAVE to be the same size to be 
identical!)  You can limit the scan to one directory tree, if you wish.  It 
then compares files of the same size to see if the contents are actually 
identical, and lists identical files by size order.  You can then double-
click on any file to examine its details, and optionally delete it.

This process can take some time, so Find Duplicates will first perform 
one of two preliminary checks to see if the files might actually be identical 
without having to actually examine the whole file.  By default, it checks the
date and time stamp of the files, and only compares the files byte-by-byte if 
the timestamps are the same.  But it is possible for two files to have the 
same contents without having the same date/time stamp, so you can enable an 
option whereby the first 512 bytes of each file are checksummed.  This 
improves the recognition of identical files, but it is slower, and since it
involves a file access, the file's last access date will be altered.  By 
default, the timestamp, not the checksum comparison is selected.  In either
case, the filename is ignored, so simply renaming a file will not hide the 
fact that it is a duplicte.  You may be rather surprised to discover what
duplicates actually exist in some popular office suites!


Usage:

Extract FindDupl.exe from the zip file to a convenient location, and run it!
You will be presented with a dialog box showing you disk drives, with your
local hard disk drives selected.  You can optionally enter a file 
specification such as *.EXE and a directory specification such as \windows
to limit the search.  Note that if you enter a directory specification, then
only that directory will be searched on each drive (e.g. c:\windows, 
d:\windows and so on).  Press the Start Search button to find duplicate files.

There is a status bar which will keep you informed on the progress of both the
directory scan phase, and the file comparison phase.  Once the main list box
has filled up with file names, you can double-click on a file name to get
a pseudo properties dialog box (actually written in Delphi, not derived from
the system right-click -> Properties box).  You will see a delete button which
allows you actually to delete the file.

+------------------------------- WARNING ------------------------------------+
|                                                                            |
|   You take sole responsibility if you choose to delete a file.  Find       |
|   Duplicates makes no attempt to check if the file is in use or key to     |
|   the functioning of your computer.  Take backups before making changes.   |
|                                                                            |
+------------------------------- WARNING ------------------------------------+


Notes:

The program is written with Borland's Delphi 2.0, and most of the source is 
included.  You do not need access to Delphi 2.0 to run Find Duplicates.  You 
will need other Delphi units (not included in the archive) in order to 
re-compile Find Duplicates.  The program has been tested on Windows 95 and
Windows NT 4.0.

Release information:

1997 Jan 29  V1.0.4  First released version

Contacting the author:

This program is freeware, and remains copyright of David Taylor, Edinburgh, 
1997.  This program is provided "as is", without any support.  Whilst I 
cannot answer queries relating to the use of this program, I'd welcome any 
comments or suggestions for improvements you may have.


E-mail: david.taylor@gecm.com
1997 January 29
