Comparing these two tools would make for an interesting analysis as both of them are well renowned for what they do, i.e. scanning for and weeding out duplicate files. There are several additional features in both of these programs too.
Filtering Options
The first difference that’ll strike you in the first look is the filtering options in these two tools. You’ll easily notice the complex filtering options that Duplicate Cleaner provides, compared to the intermediate level options incorporated by Clone Files Checker.
In order to test the duo, let’s make two text files which contain exactly identical content, and then scan them.
Both the tools identify these duplicate files without any hassle.
Since Duplicate Cleaner Pro provides an additional feature where it scans the content present inside the file and looks up for files containing the same content. Hence we changed the content of the two files into “Hello friends” and “Hello friend”, and set the similarity threshold at 90%. And it does identify these two files as potential duplicates. Although this option takes up a considerable amount of time if you’re looking among a large number of files with a low similarity threshold.
Unfortunately, Clone Files Checker does not provide this feature.
Duplicate Cleaner also enables you to specify if you just want the content inside the files to be ignored and just want the scan to be carried out by taking into account other similar attributes.
And there are also some advanced filtering options to modify your scan criteria.
Both of these tools allow you to search for duplicate music files.
As you can see, both the tools allow us to scan the content of the music files to identify the duplicates, apart from the obvious metadata search.
As a test case, we added two music files of the same song with nominal variation (My Immortal by Evanescence from Fallen and Origin albums) and scanned for duplicates. Unfortunately, both of these tools failed to identify them as duplicates. But both of them did identify these two files as duplicates when we only used the metadata search.
So we can easily conclude that both of these tools perform a simple file content match, rather than a complex music analysis.
Moreover, Clone Files checker has a very handy option to scan iTunes library for duplicates, which will surely be music to the ears of Apple fans. It also has a feature to scan your Google Drive for possible duplicates on the cloud drive.
UI and Usability
Clone Files Checker certainly enjoys a clear advantage over its rival in this category. It has a catchy yet extremely simple UI compared to its compatriot. Even though the UI of Clone Files Checker is fine, there is always room for improvements and it is hoped the next update will signal changes which combined with the excellence of the software will lead it to new heights.
The UI of Duplicate Cleaner looks to be designed while keeping in mind the same old school approach, and there isn’t much worth mentioning about it. However, one area where the Duplicate Cleaner designers deserve appreciation is how intelligently they have packed a host of features in the UI. Duplicate Cleaner provides a remarkable set of features as well as filtering options and the developers have done a commendable job arranging the GUI in a simple way that anyone can get used to within a few minutes.
Another point worth mentioning about the Duplicate Cleaner is the ability to save/load profiles to persist filtering preferences. Considering that all the complex filtering options are provided in this software, it would have been a huge drawback if this particular feature wasn’t there.
Summary
Here is a summary of our review of Clone Files Checker and Duplicate Cleaner.
| Feature | Clones File Checker | Duplicate Cleaner |
| Filtering | ||
| Text Files | ||
| Exact Matches | Yes | Yes |
| Additional Filtering Options | Size | Name, Ext, Size, Dates, Folder Depth |
| Similarity Percentage | No | Yes |
| Audio | ||
| MetaData | Yes | Yes (Checks the similarity) |
| Content Check | Yes* | Yes* |
| Images | No | Yes (tested) |
| Usability | ||
| UI | 4.5/5 | 4/5 |
| Usability | Context Menu in File Explorer | Save/Load Filtering Profiles |
You can download both these software from the official websites here: