Here, you are going to learn how to delete duplicate files on USB drive to free up more precious space.
USB drives are the most widely used storage devices due to their compact size, large capacity and fast data transfer. It is due to these characteristics that the popularity of USB drives has endured. Due to the large number of files stored on USB drives, there is a high probability of duplicate copies.
These duplicate files can take up a lot of space and cause a lot of problems. As a result, the performance of the USB drive is also affected, resulting in a noticeable slowdown. Therefore, it is important to know the process of identifying duplicate files on USB drives to ensure optimal performance of the device.
Duplicate files on a USB drive can arise from a multitude of situations. For instance, when users handle a large volume of files, it's easy to inadvertently create duplicates during the copying or transferring process. This can happen due to oversight or a lack of organizational measures.
Furthermore, software applications can sometimes generate duplicate files as part of their standard operations. This is particularly common in programs that involve data manipulation or versioning.
Interrupted or incomplete file transfers are another common scenario. If a transfer process is halted abruptly, it can result in partial duplicates on the USB drive.
In some cases, users might intentionally create duplicates for backup or archival purposes, unaware that they already have a copy elsewhere.
Overall, the presence of duplicates on a USB drive is a multifaceted issue with various underlying causes, highlighting the importance of regular maintenance and organization of digital files.
If there are fewer duplicate files on the USB flash drive, you can find the duplicate files manually by using File Explorer.
Step 1. First, press "Windows + E" to open File Explorer.
Step 2. Then, type a file extension in the search box and press Enter to display all files of a specific file type. For example, type "png" and press Enter to see all images in the "png" image format.
Step 3. Finally, turn to the "View" menu and click "Sort by" > "Name" to sort the search results by file name. After that, you can find and delete duplicate files by referring to the file name or the "Duplicate" or "(1)" character after the file name.
To clean up the USB drive and make it run faster, AOMEI Partition Assistant for Cleanup must be one of the perfect solution you can rely on.
This is a comprehensive disk partition management expert with “Duplicate Files Finder” feature. It supports to deep scan (including picture, video, audio, document, archive file, or others) from your partition or folder. After scanning, you can remove them with a few clicks according to your personal preferences.
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Free Up Disk Space To Keep Your PC Running Smoothly and Efficiently
Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant for Cleanup. Click the "Find Duplicate Files" tab.
Step 2. You can either click "Scan Now" to start the scan of your system C: drive. Or, click "Custom Scan" to manually select paths to be scanned. (Here, we take the "Custom Scan" as an example.)
Step 3. After clicking "Custom Scan", all local and external drives on your PC will be displayed. You can also click the "Add Path" button, and then a browse folder window will pop up. So you can add more paths on this PC, like Desktop, Downloads, and other folder paths.
Step 4. Once necessary paths are added, you can click the "Scan Now" button to start the scan process.
The scan process might take time. After the scan is complete, all duplicate files will be listed. You can click the button behind to locate them.
You can either manually select duplicate files, or click the "Smart Select" button to automatically select unnecessary duplicate files to delete.
Tips: If the "Smart Select" is ticked, only the oldest duplicate file will be unticked. It means that all duplicate files except the oldest one will be ticked to delete. (The oldest file means the file that was created first. This file will not be deleted. All other duplicate files are considered copies of the oldest file. )
If you manually select all copies of duplicate files, you will get a pop-up warning window to keep at least one copy of the duplicate files. If you indeed want to delete all copies of duplicate files, you can click "OK" so all copies of duplicate files will be selected to delete.
After unnecessary duplicate files are selected, please click the "Clean Now" button to start the deletion.
Step 5. The deletion might take time. After the process is finished, the selected files will be deleted, and you will get a cleaning completed window displaying how much data you deleted in total.
This is the full guide on how to delete duplicate files on USB drive. By following these steps, you can efficiently delete duplicates and remove them on your USB drive, optimizing storage space and enhancing system performance.
Last but not least, there are more advanced features that you can try to make your USB run faster, such as, moving installed program to another drive, deleting large files, even remove junk files from USB.
