Duplicate Files Fixer vs fclones

Duplicate Files Fixer scans computers, external drives, and cloud storage for duplicate photos, videos, music, documents, and other files. It can compare file contents as well as names, size, creation and modification dates, and similar names, so identical files can be detected even when their names differ. Users can preview grouped results and choose what to delete; Auto Mark selects extra copies while leaving one in each group unmarked. Folder exclusions are available. On Windows, it can scan Google Drive and Dropbox after sign-in and folder selection. The free version scans unlimited files and removes up to 15 duplicates in one go; additional deletions must be made one at a time. The paid version removes all marked duplicates in one click. It is listed for Android, macOS, and Windows. The paid plan is €35.95 a year, billed annually at a discounted price; the page also lists €64.95 as the product price. PC deletions go to the Recycle Bin by default, but USB and network-drive deletions do not.

fclones is a free command-line utility for locating groups of identical files and handling redundant copies. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and can scan multiple directory roots, standard-input file lists, and mounted or removable devices. Search controls include recursion limits, glob and regular-expression filters, and minimum or maximum file sizes. It can compare files using size, inode or file identifiers, prefix and suffix hashes, and full-content hashes. Results are available as text, fdupes-compatible output, CSV, or JSON. Once duplicates are identified, fclones can remove or move them, or replace them with soft or hard links. On supported file systems, it can deduplicate file data with native copy-on-write reflinks, a capability unavailable on Windows. Users can inspect and alter duplicate lists before removal, and dry-run mode reports changes without executing them. The Rust implementation parallelizes I/O and CPU-heavy work and adjusts processing for SSDs and HDDs. Optional persistent hash caching can help repeated scans and resumed work; the project is released under the MIT license.