This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft Tech Community - Latest Blogs - .
File management might be tedious, but it is sometimes required, especially when storage space is limited. PowerShell is an excellent tool for automating most activities, and identifying duplicate files on your computer is an excellent application of the tool.
The script below will detect and report (rather than delete) all files in the directory and subdirectories, group them by size, filter out groups with only one file, and report on the duplicate files with their full path and creation time.
# Get all files in a directory and subdirectories
$files = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File
# Group files by size
$groups = $files | Group-Object Length
# Filter groups with more than one item
$duplicates = $groups | Where-Object {$_.Count -gt 1}
# Output duplicate files
foreach ($duplicate in $duplicates) {
Write-Host "Duplicate files of size $($duplicate.Name):"
$duplicate.Group | Select-Object FullName, CreationTime | Sort-Object CreationTime | Format-Table -AutoSize
}
This script may be run in PowerShell by saving it as a.ps1 file and then running it from the PowerShell command prompt. Please keep in mind that if you have a large number of files on your computer, this script may take some time to run.
As always, please share your PowerShell automation scripts in the comments section below so that they can be added to or improved upon the script published above.