■ Speedy duplicate file detection

The menu command Tools > Check duplicates in xplorer² will look for identical files under the current folder. As we've seen in a past article discovering the duplicate files is tricky if they are renamed. Ticking on the Content option will search all files by content ignoring their names, but this is going to take a long time as files are compared byte by byte. Imagine trying to find duplicate 12 megapixel pictures or even worse, duplicate HD videos a few hundred MB each, that will take forever!

Here is a trick to speed things up. If two documents are the same, then their size will be identical. If we cannot rely on the name being identical (because we renamed a few), then we can search by type (filename extension) — that's bound to be the same. So instead of ticking the slow Content option, tick the Size and Item type property as seen in the picture to the right.

The results aren't 100% guaranteed to be duplicate files but xplorer² will find them very quickly. You can manually preview the documents and confirm whether they are identical or not. Or you can have a second pass on these rough results using the slow (but robust) scan by Content option.

ps. Happy easter, if catholically applicable!

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