Why Are there Duplicate Files on My Computer?

⚜️ Duplicate files on your computer can happen for many reasons, most of which are legitimate. Think twice about deleting duplicate files.

⚜️ Duplicate files on your computer
Duplicate files show up on your computer for several reasons. Programs install their own copies of needed files to avoid problems if other programs mess with them. Windows creates duplicates for protection and recovery purposes. Even apps can save backup copies during updates. Deleting duplicates blindly can cause problems, so I recommend you don’t.

Chapters
0:00 Duplicate Files
1:00 Legitimate duplicate files
2:10 Windows tries to protect you
3:00 Applications do it too
4:00 When it comes to deleting duplicates, don’t.

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #duplicate #files

[steves]

When I remove duplicates I only delete programs document files. I.e. jpg, docx, xlsx, mp4, mov, etc

[davinp]

Many cleaning software offer to clean up duplicate files. Unless you know you are doing, just leave duplicate files alone.

[JimE]

Well. There! Learned something 'new" again. I'll be an 81 year old geek before long.😊 Thanks Leo. JimE

[NoEggu]

When trying to free up space, duplicate files will usually contribute very little to the remedy. With 1 TB size drives being commonplace, deleting a few MB worth of duplicate files will hardly make a dent in freeing up space. Even if you clear up 1 GB of files, that is 1/10th of 1% of a 1 TB drive's capacity.

If you are running low on space, it is likely because you are downloading music and videos, and videos are especially space consuming.

Some apps could be huge, too. But you have to install an awful lot of apps to eat up that much space.

Virtual machines can be quite disk hungry. But you would know how much space you assigned to each one.

My daily driver PC is a 15 year old i7, with a 1 TB drive. I still have 200 GB of space free.

[adave]

This subject reminds me of the disastrous results I had when Google Photos used to be a folder within Google Drive. 🤦‍♂️

[olspanner]

Thanks Leo, now i understand why i have duplicate files also.

[woodlandburl]

Thank you for this information. I think that I have been lucky. Because I have deleted duplicate files. But nothing went bad. So, I feel lucky.

[jbodden]

much information irrelevant to my issue, i get double identical full songs duplicated in same folder ... entire files 'side by side', started with vlc, every time i played a song, it got another copy added, side by side, apparently no limit, identical files and same directory, supposed to not happen, at all. files become unaccessible with anything but windows legacy media player.

[roberthuntley]

OFF TOPIC BUT SIMILAR - A related question, why are there so many temporary files left behind after each time the computer is shut down and restarted, and also why doesn't the windows disk clean up process locate all of these? I routinely find left over files to delete in Windows/Temp, <User>/AppData/Local/Temp and manually delete these once a week (seems harmless, because the files that are currently in use won't be affected and you are invited to skip over them). Never had a problem caused by the practice.
PS - Is there a way of identifying which program wrote these so that I can consider abandoning its use if its something I rarely use.

[hassanmaje]

Strangely I encountered my first duplicate files on my PC today due to a OneDrive sync issue.

Surprisingly, there was no error message in the OneDrive app sync log or any warning icons next to the files (all files had the Onedrive tick icons) beside a pop-up from Onedrive mentioning about the creation of the duplicate files.

The problem is that edits made in the Onedrive cloud don’t sync back to the files on the PC, while PC edits update the cloud files instantly.

This issue occurred with Excel files, but I’m unsure if it affects others. The only fix is restarting OneDrive application or the PC. I'm using Windows 10 Pro with Office 2016. No issue with internet connection.

This is unacceptable from Microsoft.

[alfredotorres]

What about Duplicate Folders? Which one is the original Folder? Thanks in advance.

[ingamepurchasesus]

Please sir please please please 1st read my full comment I have two problem

I factory reset my phone and forget password
I add recovery phone number
And I don't add any recovery email
Now I can't login into my Google account
When I try to login recovery phone number otp verification. Then a OTP send to my mail my forget password same email !
I (I tryed too many times that's why now phone number verification lock and that reticulus crazy OTP sent to my same forget password account. It always same fast verify my recovery number with OTP then it says you are verification code send to your email) I don't remember the password that's why I forget password how can I access the mail and it's not a recovery mail.

I add only number to two step verification There is one recovery number nothing else not even a recovery mail.
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