Largest Files & Largest Folders List in Windows

Largest Files & Largest Folders

Largest Files & Largest Folders

How to List Largest Files & Largest Folders

Finding largest files and largest folders can be really handy in the disk cleanup process. While there is no built-in Windows option to do this there is a FREE Folder Size application that provides this information.

Folder Size is a small disk analysis utility that has also portable version that does not require installation. Listing the largest files and folders is just one of the many handy options of this neat little tool. It can print directory contents, scan network drives, folders, removable media, display the results in pie or bar charts, export the results to Excel, CVS, PDF, EMF, XML, JPG and other file formats.

Download and install Folder Size. Once the application is started select the drive or folder that should be scanned. The scan process is extremely fast and should be complete in seconds, but of course that depends also on the drive/folder size and speed. Once the scan process is complete all the files and folders are listed with their sizes and detailed information. See below how this looks.

Free Folder Size

Free Folder Size

Largest Files Report

List Largest Files

List Largest Files

The Largest Files Report is accessible from the toolbar where you can choose the type of report that is displayed in the details view. By default the application displays the “Files and folders” report which is similar to the one of Windows Explorer, but provides details for the sizes of the folders, the count of files and sub-folders inside and many more. In order to activate the Largest Files report, click the arrow next to the currently active report type and select “Largest files”. (see the image on the left).

The report in this mode looks like the one on the picture above, but includes the top 50 largest files in the currently selected folder and all its sub-folders. Additional column displays the path for every file.

Selecting a different folder from the folders list on the left instantly updates the report with the largest files that are located inside. There is no need to scan anything further.

Largest Folders Report

Largest Folders

Largest Folders

The Largest Folders report is the same as the Largest Files report, but lists the largest folders inside a folder or drive and all its sub-folders. All the information is presented in a neat report that can be exported in multiple file formats or can be printer or saved for further analysis. There is also a graphical representation with Pie and Bar charts and can be used for navigation too.

The top 50 largest folders are listed here too with their properties and sizes.

Mixed Largest Files and Folders Report

This is a combination of the above two reports and displays a mixed list of the largest files and folders.  There are plenty of options that can be accessed via the context menu in all reports. There is an option to locate the file or folder in Windows Explorer, show the properties dialog, copy the path to the selected item, delete the item and many more. The option to remove the item from the list gives an opportunity to evaluate the results of deleting it. If and item is removed it can be easily restored by invoking “Rescan” on the parent folder that owns it.

While there are some similar applications Folder Size is FREE and provides the most accurate results in the shortest time. It is small and does not require much disk space and does not install any services or components that may slow down the system for a feature that is not used daily. Folder Size is a “must have” tool for the disk cleanup process. MindGems Inc. provides also some other popular tools some of which have free versions too. There is a free duplicate file finder and web gallery software, duplicate image finder and duplicate mp3 finder. The screen shots above are created with Easy Screen Capture.

Duplicate Photo Finder – VSDIF 4.8.0.1 Adds Performance Improvements and More Image Formats

Duplicate Photo Finder

Duplicate Photo Finder

Find Duplicate Photos Faster With Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder 4.8.0.1

The new duplicate photo finder version is up to 80% faster when searching RAW formats and fixes some issues related to images that do not comply to the standards. VSDIF now better handles also the popular Nikon NEF RAW format and provides improved support for some of the Canon CRW formats.

This release adds support for eleven new RAW file formats – .kdc, .srw, .bay, .3fr, .k25, .cam, .nrw, .mos, .dc2, .rw1, .rwl. Find detailed information about these newly supported  formats at the bottom of this article.

The improved “Browse for Folders” dialog, scans faster folders with many files. In addition to that now you can drag&drop folders from Windows Explorer directly inside Visual Similarity Duplicate Imaged Finder and they will be added to the folders list.

There are plenty of other small GUI fixes and enhancements that include also new 32-bit toolbar icons. Click here for complete change log.

Duplicate Photo Finder Free Download
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder

Duplicate Photo Finder

Duplicate Photo Finder


File Format: .kdc
File Type: Kodak Photo-Enhancer File
Developer: Kodak
Bitmap image format used by several Kodak digital cameras, including the Kodak DC40, Kodak DC50, and Kodak DC120; can be viewed using the Kodak software included with the camera or with some third-party programs; also known as a Kodak Photogen file.

Duplicate Photo Finder Free Download
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder

File Format: .srw
File Type: Samsung RAW Image
Developer: Samsung

Digital photo taken by a Samsung digital camera; contains a RAW image captured by the digital camera in a proprietary format; commonly touched up in photo editing software before publishing to the Web or to a digital media publication. NOTE: RAW files are not traditional raster image files such as .JPG and .PNG files because they store additional information such as white balance and exposure.

File Format: .bay
 File Type: Casio RAW Image
Developer: Casio

Digital photograph captured by a Casio digial camera; saves raw image data from the camera in a proprietary format; can be touched up with some image editors and then exported to standard raster formats such as .JPG. NOTE: Casio Camera RAW files also use the .RAW extension.

File Format: .3fr
File Type: Hasselblad 3F RAW Image
Developer: Hasselblad

Digital photo captured by a Hasselblad digital camera; saves the photo in a RAW format as captured directly by the digital camera’s CCD; used for saving photos natively before applying touch-ups, such as white balance or color corrections.

File Format: .k25
 File Type: Kodak K25 Image
Developer: Kodak

Digital photo captured by a Kodak DC25 digital camera, an older model from Kodak; can be converted to .JPG or other common formats using a converter such as DC25Convert or ReaConverter.

Duplicate Photo Finder Free Download
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder

File Format: .cam
File Type: CASIO Digital Camera Picture File
Developer: CASIO

Raw camera image captured by older CASIO QV series digital cameras, including the CASIO QV-10A, QV-11, QV-100, QV-120, and QV-200; stores a picture in a proprietary bitmap format; may be viewed by the software provided with the CASIO camera. CAM files were also viewable on CASSIOPEIA E-11 mobile devices using the CASIO’s Digital Camera Viewer software.

File Format: .nrw
File Type: Nikon Raw Image File
Developer: Nikon

Raw image file produced by high-end Nikon COOLPIX and digital SLR cameras; saves image data in an uncompressed format that can be processed on the camera or on a computer after the images is captured; similar to the previous .NEF format, but is designed to support Windows Imaging Component (WIC) functions.

File Format: .mos
File Type: Leaf Camera RAW File
Developer: Leaf Imaging

RAW image captured by several different types of digital cameras, such as the Leaf Aptus series and Mamiya cameras; stores a digital image in an uncompressed format; can be opened and edited using some image-editing applications. The MOS file format was developed by Leaf, a longstanding developer of digital cameras. Several Leaf cameras, including the Aptus series are now developed by Leaf Imaging, which is a subsidiary of Phase One.

File Format: .dc2
File Type: Kodak Photo-Enhancer File
Developer: Kodak

Camera RAW file created by some Kodak digital cameras; stores the image in an uncompressed format exactly as it was captured on the camera; often imported into photo-editing software for touch-ups and publishing.

File Format: .rw1, .rwl
File Type: Leica RAW Image
Developer: Leica

Camera RAW image created by a Leica digital camera; saves the picture in a proprietary raw format and maintains the original data as captured by the camera’s CCD; often touched up using photo editing software before publishing to the Web, a slide show, or to another digital publication.

Duplicate Photo Finder Free Download
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder

Audio Dedupe Music Manager $400 Giveaway – Organize Music Libraries, Remove Duplicate Songs and Find Similar Audio Files

Remove Duplicate Songs

Remove Duplicate Songs

MindGems Inc. is Giving Away 10 Licenses for Audio Dedupe PRO Music Manager Worth $400 – Remove Duplicate Songs and Organize Audio Libraries

Audio Dedupe will “Listen” to songs in order to find similar and duplicate audio files. The tool can find duplicate MP3 files and 18 other popular audio formats.

It will list all similar and duplicate songs grouped by similarity. Audio Dedupe can automatically select files with lower quality for deleting. There is a built-in audio player with continuous playback that can be used in order to quickly review the quality of the duplicate songs.

The main benefits of using this tool are:

  • Organize audio collections
  • Remove annoying duplicate files from your music library
  • Save valuable disk space by removing duplicates
  • Find similar songs and re mixes and group them together

Having duplicate audio files on mp3 players, iTunes, iPod, iPhone or iPad is not only annoying, but wastes valuable storage. While it may be easy to clean up few hundred files most people have huge collections and identifying and cleaning duplicates turns out not to be so easy. Audio Dedupe is an innovative tool that can recognize duplicate songs even if they are stored in different file formats. This is something that a standard duplicate file finder can not achieve. This is because if the same song is stored in different audio formats the file data is completely different even if it contains the same audio. Unlike the common duplicate file finders Audio Dedupe decodes the audio data and performs real audio analysis in order to identify similar and duplicate music inside an audio collection. There is a free demo available for download at www.mindgems.com, which you can use in order to evaluate the tool.


Audio Dedupe supports the following audio file formats:

  • AAC Files (*.aac; *.mp4, *.m4a) – iTunes, iPod, iPhone Audio Files including Apple Lossles audio
  • AC3 Files (*.ac3)
  • Audio IFF Files (*.aif; *.aiff)
  • FLAC Files (*.flac)
  • MPEG Audio Files (*.mp3;*.mp2;*.mp1;*.mpa)
  • Musepack Files (*.mpc)
  • OGG Files (*.ogg)
  • WAVE Files (*.wav)
  • WavPack Files (*.wv)
  • Windows Media Audio Files (*.wma)
  • Monkey’s Audio Files (APE)
  • True Audio Files (TTA)

Find Similar Songs

Find Similar Songs

MindGems Inc. provides also a tool that can find similar images named Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder (VSDIF). It works in a similar to Audio Dedupe way, but for image files. You might also check the free Duplicate File Finder and Folder Size tools that will help with the disk cleanup process.

How to enter this giveaway:

Entering takes just few seconds and is not related to filling endless surveys. Just share MindGems on your favorite social networks using the widget below and sign up for the newsletter. MindGems Inc. will not reveal your e-mail address to third parties. It will be used to notify you if you are the winner in this giveaway and to notify you about product update, discounts and other giveaways that are organized by MindGems Inc. If you do not want to receive those updates you can always unsubscribe once the giveaway ends. This giveaway will be active until 22 May 2013.

Do not be turned down by the count of entries. Every user can have multiple entries that increase his/here chance to win by performing different actions. See the widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How to Organize Images?

How to Organize Digital Images and Photos

The issue behind organizing images

Nowadays most users have thousands of images and while organizing few hundred images may not be so difficult it is a headache to organize thousands or even hundreds of thousands photos. Luckily Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder (VSDIF) can help with this task. There is a free download available at the product’s web site so you can download and test the tool before placing an order. VSDIF is the best tool for finding duplicate photos.

Quick tutorial on how to organize images (for novice users)

Once you download and install the duplicate image finder all you need to do is to create a new project and add the folders to be scanned.

Duplicate Image Finder

Duplicate Image Finder

Click the New Project button to create a new project. A dialog box will pop-up automatically where you have to select the folder where the images are located. The selected folder will appear in the folders list panel on the right.  If you have photos in different locations just use the “Add Folder” (1) button to add more folders.

Some important notes for novice users:

  • Add only the folders with you own photo collections – not your entire drives.  If you add your entire drive all the images that are duplicates will be listed. This means that these results will include images also from applications and from the operating system. Some of those images are intentionally duplicated so deleting them may lead to malfunction in your applications or operating system.

Once the folders are added select the scan method.

Find the Exact Duplicate Images First

Before running a “Visual Compare” use the “100% Identical Files” mode. It is much faster and will list exact duplicates.This will help you to quickly get rid of the exact duplicate files and will reduce the amount of images that will be scanned using the slower “Visual Compare” method.

Find Similar Images

The default scan method is “Visual Compare” at 95%. Usually this should work best for you and we do not recommend lowering the value below 90% as it will lead to false positives. The levels below 90% can be used by advanced users for certain special types of scans.

Review Duplicate Image Results

Once the tool completes the scan it will list all similar or duplicate images and group them by similarity. Name, path, properties and similarity are listed for ever image in the duplicates grid. The groups are listed in alternating colors for better readability and the group number that the image belongs to is listed on the right.

Mark Duplicate Images for Deleting

Use the “Auto Check” panel in the bottom left corner to mark files automatically. By default it will mark files with smaller dimension and files size meaning that it will keep the images with the best quality. You can change these settings via the check-boxes and the advanced button in this section. Auto-Check will select all images in a group except ONE – the image that will be kept depends on the above settings.

Some important notes for novice users:

  • Always review the results before deleting or use the MOVE option and make a backup before deciding whether to delete the files permanently or not .

There are plenty of shortcuts in VSDIF that will make things easier while reviewing duplicates. You can use Space Bar for example in order to check/un-check an image. Take a look at the help file for complete list of shortcuts.

Delete Duplicate Images

You can delete duplicates manually or automatically. Using the “DEL” key you can delete the currently selected image.

Some important notes for novice users:

  • Use the delete functionality inside VSDIF to delete images. If you have scanned some folders and then later manually remove folders or images using Windows Explorer you will get “Not Found” message inside VSDIF for the missing items as they are no longer present at the location that was available during the scan process.

Once you have reviewed the results and marked the images that you want to remove you have several options. You can move the files to a backup folder before deciding whether to delete the permanently or not. The other option is to delete the file to Recycle Bin from where you can restore them if you have deleted something by mistake. The third options is to PERMANENTLY delete the files. You have to be 100% sure before using this option as there is no way of recovering the deleted files.

Final Words:

This is a very basic tutorial on how to get rid of duplicate photos and organize an image collection. You can find an Advanced Tutorial on How To Remove Duplicate Images here.

Audio Dedupe Music Manager – Organize Songs in Windows 8

Audio Dedupe - Music Manager

Audio Dedupe - Music Manager

Remove Duplicate Songs, Find Similar MP3 Files, Save Valuable Disk Space with Audio Dedupe Music Manager 2.9.0.1

Finding similar songs and organizing audio files has never been easier. Version 2.9.0.1 of the popular duplicate mp3 finder Audio Dedupe is released and available for download.

There are plenty of new features and performance improvements in the latest Audio Dedupe relese. The latest version of Windows 8 is now fully supported.

This brand new release utilizes the new cache system that was introduced in our duplicate photo finder application recently and brings immense performance improvement. Searching for duplicate mp3 files can be more than 1000 (thousand) times faster when using the cache.

The filtering dialog now provides an option to exclude certain files based on different properties like type, location, size, date, name and more. This provides a lot more flexibility when searching for duplicate songs.

There is a new option in “Quick Check” – “Check All Except First in Group”. A new option “Show warning if all files in a group are marked for deleting” provides a higher reliability and will warn if someone tries to delete all the copies of the same song.

Project loading times are optimized and now large projects will be loaded much faster. A new command-line -p option to save the project after scan is added.

There are quite some optimizations applied to the “Browse for folder” dialog. It now displays much faster and can navigate to a path that is pasted from the clipboard. There is also ‘drag and drop’ support available inside Audio Dedupe and you can drag your folder from Windows Explorer inside the application in order to include them in the scan.

There are plenty of other small bug fixes and improvements that you can find listed in the What’s New section.

Find Similar MP3 Files - Music Manager

Find Similar MP3 Files - Music Manager

Audio & Music Manager – Remove Duplicate Songs

Audio Manager

Audio Manager

Music Manager – Delete Duplicate Songs

Managing music files and deleting duplicate songs will not only result in a better organized music collection, but will also save gigabytes of valuable disk space. It is extremely annoying to have duplicate songs in your iTunes Library, iPhone, iPod, iPad or any other mp3 player. Using a musing manager application can solve this issue and keep a clean of duplicates music collection.

Audio Dedupe is an innovative tool that can put and end to the mess in a music collection. There are plenty of methods that Audio Dedupe offer in organizing songs. The most notable thing about this product is the fact that it will actually “Listen” to the songs in a music collection in order to find similar or duplicate items. The tool performs a real audio analysis and can find similar songs even if they are stored in different audio formats. It does not rely on data like ID3 tags. If the songs are ripped from a CD or imported/downloaded from other locations and miss their ID3 tags Audio Dedupe is still able to identify them.

While many duplicate file finders are marketed like duplicate music finders the only thing they do is to find exact duplicates or in best case to look for duplicate ID3 tags. This is not much convenient as files that are stored in different file formats or have different ID3 tags or are not tagged at all will not be identified. This is the most often case when looking for duplicates so a standard duplicate file finder does not help much when the word comes to managing music libraries.

Using Audio Dedupe to manage a music collection is easy. It can scan an entire computer or just certain folders where the audio files are stored. The tool will locate and analyze all supported audio files and list them in a neat table grouped by similarity. While talking about file format we should mention that it support all common audio formats like – AAC Files (*.aac; *.mp4, *.m4a) – iTunes, iPod, iPhone Audio Files including Apple Lossles audio, AC3 Files (*.ac3), Audio IFF Files (*.aif; *.aiff), FLAC Files (*.flac), MPEG Audio Files (*.mp3;*.mp2;*.mp1;*.mpa), Musepack Files (*.mpc), OGG Files (*.ogg), WAVE Files (*.wav), WavPack Files (*.wv), Windows Media Audio Files (*.wma).

There is a built in player that supports continuous playback while switching between files. This is very handy as one can easily compare the quality of the audio in order to keep the best one in the collection. Speaking about quality, the application lists the bit rate, size, length, format and many other properties for every file in order for the user to easily choose the one to keep. There are also auto-check features that can automatically select files for deletion based on the above mentioned properties and also file date, file time, file location and so on.

Keeping an organized music collection and managing songs is easy using Audio Dedupe.

Music Manager

Music Manager

How to Organize Photos

Organizing Digital Photos and Images

Organize Photos

Organize Photos

In our digital era most people have huge image collections and organizing the photos turns out not to be an easy task. A growing number of devices (cameras, phones, tablets…) are now equipped with image capture capabilities and the quantity of images in an average image collection grows rapidly. The fact that taking a digital picture does not cost anything makes things even worse as those image collections contain multiple shots of the same object, scene or person. Unfortunately this large quantity of files is hard to maintain and costs a lot of disk space.

Organizing Photos by Removing Duplicates

The first important thing to do is to get rid of the duplicates. This task can take ages on large photo collections so using a  dedicated tool is a necessity. Luckily Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder by MindGems Inc. can solve the issue instantly. VSDIF is an innovative tool that can recognize similar or duplicate photos even if they are stored in different file formats. The tool supports more than 100 common image formats and more than 300 RAW camera formats. This tool is an industry leader in this field and is used in the medical industry, stock photography web sites, document management systems and many more. While the Corporate version is quite expensive MindGems provides a desktop version which is popular among the professional photographers at a very low cost . A free demo is available for download here.

Organizing Photos by Grouping Similar Images

VSDIF can help with organizing photos also by finding similar images. If photos from the same photo shoot are scattered all over the computer VSDIF will identify them and group them together by similarity. A similarity percentage that can be adjusted to a certain threshold determines how similar the grouped images should be. There is also an option to compare the EXIF date time. This is handy to identify images that are taken in burst mode or images that have close dates and times. The feature works by grouping together images that have delay between the shots smaller than a specified period of time.

Organizing Photos Using Image Search

One of the options in VSDIF is to search for images by providing a sample image. If photos from a photo shoot are moved to a folder and left orphaned the feature will help to easily locate the source folder from where they were moved. It is also useful for finding all the images that contain certain person, scene or object.

Duplicate Image Finder

Duplicate Image Finder

Print Directory

Print Directory

Print Directory

How to Print Directory contents?

Printing directory is something that everyone needs now or then. Unfortunately there is no built-in option to do this in Windows. While there are plenty of commercial applications that can do this a free disk cleanup tool has this neat option and can print also to multiple file formats besides printing on paper.

Folder Size is a FREE tool aimed towards disk cleanup. Printing directory is the least that this tool can do.

1. Download and install Folder Size. Once it is installed on a computer it adds a context menu item in Windows Explorer named “Scan with Folder Size”
2. Navigate to the folder that should be printed and right-click the item in order to invoke “Scan with Folder Size”
3. The content of the folder is instantly displayed in the Folder Size application and available for analysis.
4. Use the File->Print option in order to print the content.
5. There are plenty of options that can be tweaked. The application can print to PPV (Print Preview), EMF, Multi-page TIFF or PDF.

The main purpose of Folder Size though is the disk cleanup process. This tools will scan and display the folder and file sizes for easy visualization of the hard disk space distribution. It can list also the largest files and the largest folders. There are plenty of export features that can save the data in XML, CSV, JPG and other file formats. Folder Size is free for personal use.

There is a short video that displays how to use Folder Size in order to Print Directory:

Duplicate Image Finder – Outstanding Performance and Windows 8 Support

Fstest Duplicate Image Finder

Fastest Duplicate Image Finder

Search for Duplicate Images Faster Than Ever

Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder 4.7.0.1 is now Windows 8 certified. The application utilizes a new cache system that provides immense speed improvement in the pre-processing stage. The improvement can be up to 1000 (no it is not a typo – thousand times)  faster depending on the count of images. Using the new cache system VSDIF can now pre-process 10,000 images in a second. It is strongly recommended to use the new cache system as consequential scans of an image library will be extremely fast.

The best thing regarding the new cache is the fact that it also detects modified files. This means that a file which was cached in a previous scan and has been modified will be identified and re-processed. This ensures that the duplicate image finder will use the latest version of every file even when using the cache system. The new cache system is available also for the “Image Search” feature and will work equally fast. Old cache files were designed for slow storage and computers and are no longer supported.

In addition to the options that were available for excluding files, the improvements in the filtering options now allow to include files based on various criteria. Here are the filtering options:

Duplicate Image Finder Filter

Duplicate Image Finder Filter

There is a new option “Check All Except First in Group” in the Auto-check feature.  An  updated browse for folder dialog can be used to navigate to a folder that is pasted from the clipboard. There is a huge speed improvement when loading large project files. The entire change log can be found here.

Do not forget to check also the free Duplicate File Finder, Duplicate MP3 Finder and Folder Size tools that will help with the disk cleanup process.

Screen Privacy – Boss Key 5.0 for Windows 7 & 8

Boss Key - Screen Privacy

Boss Key - Screen Privacy

How to Protect Your Screen Privacy

Nowadays screen privacy is an issue that everyone is facing either in the crowded office with inquisitive colleagues and a patronizing boss or at home with over-caring and curious relatives. Usually when writing a confidential email, checking your bank account, entering sensitive data in a web form or performing other private tasks you would prefer nobody to watch. Unfortunately people are curious creatures by nature and often will try to check on your activities.

You have several options in such case:

  • do nothing
  • close the active window, consequently losing all data entered in it
  • reboot the computer and lose yet more data
  • use Boss Key to instantly hide the active window

MindGems Inc. has released Boss Key 5.0 that can completely solve these issues. How does Boss Key protect your screen privacy:

  • Hides all windows/applications instantly with a press of a keyboard or a mouse shortcut
  • Preserves the running applications active while they are hidden and preserves your data in tact
  • Mutes sound if important audio with sensitive content was playing
  • Restores display resolution if you were watching a movie or playing a game
  • Hides the system tray in order to cover applications like Skype, ICQ
  • Restores all the applications to the state before hiding them with the press of a single key stroke

Boss Key is available for download free of charge. While you may not always need a boss key application you can install this all-in-one privacy tool that may save you a lot of headaches. It will be there for you when you need it the most!

Screen Privacy Tool

Screen Privacy Tool

Do your have ideas, suggestions or recommendations? Drop them in the comments below. We would love to hear them!