No matter how much storage you have, at some point in time, you may run into the problem of low storage. Your downloads, photos, and videos may take up tremendous space. Besides, your actions can cause a lot of duplications. All this, most often, happens without your knowledge. While it is not possible to avoid dupes, there are ways to reduce and fix them. This review will discuss how one such tool, Easy Duplicate Finder (EDF), works and what are its best alternatives.

Easy Duplicate Finder (EDF)

EDF is one of the most popular duplicate finders available for Windows and Mac. It is a feature-rich app that works in various ways to find dupes. EDF has an easy to use and professional interface.

With EDF, you can perform the following tasks:

• Find duplicate documents and files. You may specify the file extensions you want to scan and exclude from the dialog, or you can choose to scan all files regardless of their types.
• Find duplicate music files: Use various music tags to find duplicate music. You may search for them using title, album, artist, bitrate, etc.
• Find duplicate videos and movies: Duplicate videos are the biggest space-eaters. If you’ve downloaded or copied the same videos and movies multiple times, EDF can identify them for you.
• Find duplicates on the cloud platforms: Use the cloud scan feature to find duplicates stored on popular cloud platforms.
• Delete empty folders: You may use this feature to get rid of empty folders that you don’t need.
• The Fix Wizard does everything for you. If selected, it automatically batch selects and deletes the dupes.
• You can look for duplicate files in two different folders using the Folder Compare feature.
• Find duplicate emails: Find duplicate emails from inbox, outbox, spam and drafts folders.

Is EDF Free?

No, EDF is NOT a free app. You’re limited to fixing only 10 duplicate groups. To fix more (or 20 groups), you need to provide your email address. Currently, EDF is available for just $39, and you’ll get a lifetime license for one computer that includes one year of updates.

Best Alternative: Clone Files Checker

Clone Files Checker (CFC) can bore deep inside your drives, looking for ever-expanding duplicate files by various methods. CFC is available for both Windows and Mac at a reasonable price.

Here’s why CFC is your best bet if you’re looking for a strong alternative to EDF:

Music Search

Search for duplicate music by their tags, such as title, artist, album, track, duration, bitrate, and file content (if tags are missing). Much like the System Scan, you may exclude files above/ below a certain size of your choice.

What are Music Tags? Are They Always Accurate?

Music tags contain different types of information, such as album artist, artwork, track information, copyright, etc. Whenever you download music online, it may come with the music tags pre-filled. Sometimes, your favorite music app automatically downloads them online whenever you try to play music. You may view the music tags using iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other music player application that supports viewing.

Music tags may not always be accurate. For example, when you purchase or download music from reputed  websites, your music provider fills up those ID3 tags. Some non-reputed websites may keep the music tags information incomplete or may not fill it correctly. That is why CFC warns you to review the results carefully, as your music tags may not always be accurate.

iTunes Search

Much like the Music Search feature, you can search for duplicate music in your iTunes library. CFC automatically detects your iTunes library and looks for duplicate music. Get rid of the digital clutter and stop repeating the same music files over and again.

Remove Dead Tracks

Your iTunes library may contain a lot of dead tracks that can’t be played because the original media file is missing or deleted. Typically, such files have an exclamation mark before the music name. Whenever you try  to play such tracks, you’ll get the file not found error.

CFC has an integrated Dead Track Remover for iTunes. You can remove dead tracks and declutter your iTunes library in just a few clicks.

Cloud Scan

With a subscription to CFC, you get free access to Sorcim’s Cloud Duplicate Finder. CDF is a fully Web-based app that lets you find duplicate documents, music, images, videos, and archives on various cloud platforms. It supports the most popular Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and Box.

Cloud Scan - Similar Photo Finder

Another key feature of Cloud Duplicate Finder is its ability to find similar photos. You can search for similar-looking images on Google Drive and OneDrive. And you can customize the scan level from hard to medium to low.

Empty Folder Remover

Do you have lots of empty folders? You can eliminate them all with one-click using the Empty Folder Remover.

History

CFC provides a detailed history of your past scans and an overview of what actions were taken against each file.

Backup

CFC has an in-built backup feature. You can always backup your dupes before deleting them. You may quickly restore deleted backup files from the History tab. Don’t worry, backups are optional, and they don’t take much storage. CFC automatically compresses your deleted duplicates to reduce the overall file size.