Forum Discussion
Smith9
Jun 25, 2025Iron Contributor
Look for a fast duplicate file finder for Windows 11/10
My Windows 11 PC and Windows 10 laptop have accumulated a large number of files over the years, mostly are photos, documents, music, and videos. I suspect there are many duplicates taking up unnecess...
Blackrage
Jun 25, 2025Iron Contributor
You can use PowerShell and Get-FileHash command to find duplicate files in Windows 11, Windows 10 and Windows 7. There is no need to install extract duplicate file finder in Windows or this task.
Step 1: Open Windows Terminal or PowerShell as an administrator.
Step 2: Run a one-liner that walks a folder tree, calculates a SHA-256 hash for every file, groups identical hashes, and prints anything with more than one match:
Get-ChildItem "D:\Data" -Recurse -File |
Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 |
Group-Object Hash | Where-Object { $_.Count -gt 1 } |
ForEach-Object {
"`n### Duplicate set (`$($_.Count) files, hash=$($_.Name))"
$_.Group | Select-Object Path, Length
}
Redirect the output to a text file if you want a report: ... | Out-File Duplicates.txt.
Because the check is content-based, it doesn't matter if file names differ. When you're comfortable the list is correct, you can pipe the duplicates to Remove-Item instead of printing them without 3rd-party duplicate file finder software.