What duplicate files are safe to delete?

[Suzanne_L]

I've found a lot of duplicates but many are slightly different at the end of the file paths, but they may be the same size and have the same name.  I've attached a snippet.  How do I know if I can delete any of the duplicates since I have so many?  As you can see, many duplicate files end in "_1".  Can they be deleted?  

[APMichael]

I would strongly advise against searching for or even deleting duplicate files in the system folders, such as "Program Files" or "Windows". Many programs and also Windows unfortunately have the habit of creating files multiple times, however, in the vast majority of cases deleting these files leads to damage, so that a repair or reinstallation becomes necessary.

 

[nukecad]

Duplicate Finder can do the hard work of finding any duplicates for you.

But when all is said and done only you can decide which files you want to keep and which you don't.
Nobody else can make that decision for you, and certainly an application can't decide it for you.

There are a few things to be aware of when using Duplicate Finder:

• It's main use is to find duplicates of your own files, photos, documents, music, etc. that you may have saved or copied to more than one place.
  I suggest that you may want to 'ADD' a search path for Pictures, Documents, Downloads, etc. folder(s) you want to search for duplicates, and only search that  (see below for an example).
   
• You should leave the system files alone, always set duplicate finder to ignore them. (unless you have a specific problem with some particular system files).
• Many system files need duplicates in different places, and if you delete those duplicates some things may/will stop working properly.
   
• Even with your own files remember that 'photo 01' in one folder may not be the same as 'photo 01' in a different folder - so it's usually best to untick 'name' and search on file size/contents rather than name.
   
• Only delete something if you are certain that you don't need/want it.
   
• If you don't know exactly what any duplicate file found is then it's best to leave it alone.

Taking note of the above I would suggest that setting the 'Match by', Ignore', and 'Include' similar to these screenshots is the safest (best) way to search for your own duplicates, you may want to 'add' more paths to search.
This first will search only user Steve's Documents, Downloads, and Pictures folders and report only any exact duplicates found there whatever they are named.

An alternative would be to do it like this and tell it to search all the sub-folders in 'Steve', this is of course searching more folders and so is likely to find more duplicates which may not be the ones you are looking for:

in either case when Adding the pathnames to include make sure to select the 'Files and sub-folders' option.

    click OK then      

 

After searching you can output a list of what has been found to a textfile if you want to check them out further before deciding if you want to delete them or not.
You cannot import that textfile back into duplicate finder, things may have changed since you made that textfile so a new scan is needed each time you use duplicate finder.
Once you have decided which, if any, files to delete then you can use the tickboxes to delete one (or more) of the duplicates.

When using the tickboxes then you have to select them one by one, there is no 'Delete All' button - that would be just too dangerous and you could very easily delete (hundreds of) things that you want or need.

There is more information on using Duplicate Finder here:
https://support.ccleaner.com/s/article/how-do-i-use-ccleaner-for-windows-duplicate-file-finder?language=en_US

 

[Suzanne_L]

Thank you for your answer.  It was very informative.

[redwolfe_98]

i don't believe that there ever are any duplicate files that need to be removed.

windows does not generate duplicate files that need to be removed.

[Suzanne_L]

7 hours ago, redwolfe_98 said:

i don't believe that there ever are any duplicate files that need to be removed.

windows does not generate duplicate files that need to be removed.

Thank you.