Top 5 OneDrive Duplicate Removers
Cloud storage technology is increasingly used to store large files, share files, collaborate between teams, sync data across devices. OneDrive is a popular cloud storage platform for students, professionals and enterprise-customers. It automatically synchronizes files as you work offline or online on your device. You can also choose which folders to be available offline and which ones online-only.
If you’re using OneDrive regularly, you may have acquired a lot of duplicate files. Choosing the right duplicate finder for OneDrive is tough, especially when there are so many out there. In this guide, we’ll look at the top 5 OneDrive duplicate finders and compare them on the bases of ease-of-use, features, price and other parameters.
Key Features of Microsoft OneDrive
Why is OneDrive so popular? Why is an increasing number of individuals and businesses are switching to OneDrive? Here are some prominent reasons for its mass appeal:
- If you’re already using Microsoft 365, an office productivity suite, you get 1 TB of OneDrive storage for free.
- Your data in the OneDrive account is encrypted for privacy purposes.
- You can access your files across any device at any time with the ability to view or edit these files offline.
- You can share documents and files in real-time with colleagues.
- An excellent backup protection to prevent data loss from malware and accidental data deletion
What Causes Duplication in OneDrive?
There are multiple reasons why you might have duplicate files in your OneDrive account. Here are some of them:
- If a OneDrive account is synced with multiple devices, conflicts might arise. For example: If a file was modified offline on multiple devices at the same time, there may be conflicts during the sync process. When it occurs, OneDrive will upload all the modified versions of the same file with different names, in order to prevent potential data loss.
- User activities such as uploading the same file again and again, copying the same file to multiple folders, or forgetting to delete an unneeded file from the server after downloading to PC, can also lead to duplication.
Now let’s head to our top 5 duplicate file finders for OneDrive.
1. Cloud Duplicate Finder (CDF)
The OneDrive Duplicate File Finder, CDF is a Web-based duplicate file finder that can be used from any device. With a few clicks, you can integrate and deduplicate your OneDrive duplicate files.
Cloud Duplicate Finder has been designed keeping the security and privacy in mind. It uses the official APIs from OneDrive and other services to gain temporary access to your cloud account. You can revoke this access anytime by simply signing out your cloud account. No data is stored on the CDF’s server.
Advantages:
- Fully Web-based. There’s no need to download or install a separate tool on your machine.
- Similar Photo Finder: CDF is unique because it comes with a Similar Photo Finder that lets you find visually similar photos, in addition to the exact matching duplicates.
- Support for multiple cloud platforms including Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and Box Cloud.
- Permanently delete duplicate files or move them to a separate folder
- Cross-platform compatibility: Since CDF is a Web-based service, you can use it from any device regardless of the operating system.
- Ability to scan only specific file types (documents, photos, videos, music, etc).
- In-house file previewing.
- Automatic file selection using a variety of selection criterias.
Disadvantages:
- It requires constant access to the Internet since the service is fully cloud-based. You cannot use CDF when you’re offline.
2. CISDEM Duplicate Finder
CISDEM Duplicate Finder can help you delete duplicate OneDrive files. It is a Desktop-based standalone tool that also supports finding duplicates from external hard disks, memory cards, etc.
Features:
- Search and delete duplicate documents, photos, videos and music.
- Two modes of file scanning: Find duplicates by their names (common file names to multiple files) or find duplicates by their content (same content regardless of the file names).
- Supports scanning duplicate files on external storage mediums such as external hard drive and SD cards (memory cards).
- In-house file previewing.
- Batch duplicate files selection.
- Compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Mac.
Advantages:
- Easy to use.
- Available for both Windows & Mac.
Disadvantages:
- You must download and install the CISDEM Duplicate Finder tool on your computer. This tool is not Web-based.
- You’ll need the OneDrive Sync client installed on your PC
3. Duplicate Media Finder (DMF)
Duplicate Media Finder (DMF) can find duplicate files from your cloud accounts as well as your PC’s internal and external storage drives, NAS (Network Attached Storage), Android & iPhone smartphones.
Advantages:
- Supports multiple cloud platforms including OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, Mega etc.
- Offers a free edition to find and delete various types of duplicate files (documents, music, images, etc).
- Automatic file selection.
Disadvantages:
- Not compatible with Windows S editions.
- The free edition disables Similar Content search feature and imposes other restrictions.
4. Fast Duplicate File Finder
Much like other utilities, Fast Duplicate Finder is a software that also provides the cloud scanning feature. The interface of Fast Duplicate Finder is mainly divided into two parts- one large left-hand side panel that occupies the better part of the screen, and the right-hand side panel that shows scan directories list and other scan options pertaining to scan method, similarity level, etc.
Advantages:
- Find duplicate documents, photos, music, etc.
- Compare files by content so you’ll find duplicates regardless of whether they have the same file names or not.
- In-house file previews available.
- Automatically mark or unmark files. Exclude files by directory, extensions, size, date, filenames, etc.
- Protects system files.
- Multi-language support.
Disadvantages:
- You must have the OneDrive Sync client installed in order to find and delete duplicate files.
5. Duplicate Sweeper
Duplicate Sweeper is another standalone app for Windows and Mac. It is also available on the Microsoft Store. With Duplicate Sweeper, you can find duplicate files from major cloud platforms and provide in-depth reviewing functionality. It also has a user-friendly appearance and is affordable in price.
Advantages:
- Duplicate Sweeper is available for both Windows and Mac as a downloadable software.
- Supports scanning duplicates from OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud.
- In-house file previewing.
- Select duplicates by their date of creation/ modification.
- Ability to undo actions if you wrongly delete a file.
- Depicts the duplicate file types data into an easy chart.
- Also available for download on Microsoft Store.
- Ability to identify duplicates by same content or same file names.
Disadvantages:
- Duplicate Sweeper does not support scanning an entire drive (for example: C:\, D:\, etc.).
- Minimalistic user interface.