No matter how big hard drives get, we seem to run out of space just as quickly. This space is filled up by music, photos, movies, and documents you use daily. If you have duplicate copies of these, however, you're losing a massive amount of space. A duplicate file finder is one way to bring order into the chaos. And at $40, Easy Duplicate Finder is a solid and customizable way to get rid of some duplicate files.

Free options are abundant in the duplicate finders market, and if you're simply looking to delete your duplicate files, duplicate finders from Auslogics or DigitalVolcano will serve you well. With its $40 price tag, Easy Duplicate Finder offers some extra features that do provide more control, especially over the processing stage.

Easy Duplicate Finder's interface feels a bit old-fashioned, but is easy enough to understand and use. Scan folder or subfolders by dragging and dropping, and use the filters to scan for certain file types, limit file size, or exclude entire folders from the scan. The results are presented on the bottom part of the window, and here too, Easy Duplicate Finder can help you with decisions.

On my system, Easy Duplicate Finder scanned nearly 90,000 files in 34 minutes, and declared over 6GB of them to be duplicates. This is very thorough compared to similar tools. The results are displayed in both a list and a colorful pie chart, which show all your duplicates according to file types. You can use the chart to spot the most problematic file type, and head straight to the problem source using the left-side menu.

Looking at the results, you can easily choose to delete, move, or rename only the files you want. Here I encountered a small bug in the program: Sometimes it just doesn't perform the action you choose. Trying again usually solves this problem. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of files, use the Resolve Duplicates Assistant to help you reach a general decision. Don't worry, you can always undo any action you decide to perform.

Easy Duplicate Finder can either bore deep into your system, searching inside compressed files, looking at music tags, and examining file contents, or it can simply find all duplicate images or music files in a single folder. Outlook users can use it to easily find duplicate contacts and emails, and it can even be used to take control over your ever-expanding iTunes library.

You can try Easy Duplicate Finder for free, but it will let you take care of only 10 groups of duplicate files before requesting an upgrade. You can continue scanning without upgrading, but you will have to resolve the duplicates yourself. Is it worth $40? Only if you really need the special features and fine-grained control it provides. For simple duplicate file detection, especially on a home computer, a free option would do just as well.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system. When installing Easy Duplicate Finder, it will also install the Webminds toolbar and turn Ask into your default browser homepage. You can opt out of these options during the installation.