Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)

find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
This dup finder saves time by comparing size first, then md5sum, it doesn't delete anything, just lists them.

82
2009-09-21 00:24:14

10 Alternatives + Submit Alt

  • If you have the fdupes command, you'll save a lot of typing. It can do recursive searches (-r,-R) and it allows you to interactively select which of the duplicate files found you wish to keep or delete.


    24
    fdupes -r .
    Vilemirth · 2011-02-19 17:02:30 0
  • Calculates md5 sum of files. sort (required for uniq to work). uniq based on only the hash. use cut ro remove the hash from the result.


    18
    find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq --all-repeated=separate -w 33 | cut -c 35-
    infinull · 2009-08-04 07:05:12 0
  • Improvement of the command "Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)" when searching for duplicate files in a directory containing a subversion working copy. This way the (multiple dupicates) in the meta-information directories are ignored. Can easily be adopted for other VCS as well. For CVS i.e. change ".svn" into ".csv": find -type d -name ".csv" -prune -o -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type d -name ".csv" -prune -o -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate Show Sample Output


    2
    find -type d -name ".svn" -prune -o -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type d -name ".svn" -prune -o -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
    2chg · 2010-01-28 09:45:29 0
  • This works on Mac OS X using the `md5` command instead of `md5sum`, which works similarly, but has a different output format. Note that this only prints the name of the duplicates, not the original file. This is handy because you can add `| xargs rm` to the end of the command to delete all the duplicates while leaving the original.


    2
    find . -type f -exec md5 '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -f 3 -d | sed -e "s/.*(\(.*\)).*/\1/"
    noahspurrier · 2012-01-14 08:54:12 4
  • Finds duplicates based on MD5 sum. Compares only files with the same size. Performance improvements on: find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate The new version takes around 3 seconds where the old version took around 17 minutes. The bottle neck in the old command was the second find. It searches for the files with the specified file size. The new version keeps the file path and size from the beginning.


    2
    find -not -empty -type f -printf "%-30s'\t\"%h/%f\"\n" | sort -rn -t$'\t' | uniq -w30 -D | cut -f 2 -d $'\t' | xargs md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
    fobos3 · 2014-10-19 02:00:55 1

What Others Think

awsome, much faster then fdupes.
dakunesu · 867 weeks and 3 days ago
Isn't the -D redundant?
dennisw · 866 weeks ago
yes it is... thanks for noticing, I fixed it.
grokskookum · 866 weeks ago
How can you mass delete these files once they're found? (I'd like to keep one of them)
matthewbauer · 861 weeks and 6 days ago
you might want to look at fdupes or fslint in order to help with hardlinking / deleting, etc... my command is really just a quick hack to list them.
grokskookum · 861 weeks and 6 days ago
Fantastic, man. this is truly great.
oernii3 · 790 weeks and 4 days ago
"find -type" doesn?t work on Mac OS X.
ELV1S · 729 weeks and 3 days ago
can filename comparison be added as a first step to the first solution given? find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate seems to me checking filename first could speed things up. if two files lack the same filename then in many cases i would not consider them a dupe. thanks
johnywhy · 721 weeks and 3 days ago
Hi, I would like if it is any way of find duplicates of a given file (not all duplicates on the fs) maybe searching directly by md5. It would be great for me.
tia · 682 weeks and 3 days ago
Does anyone know a way to find duplicate files between 2 volumes based only on size and name?
d0g · 639 weeks and 5 days ago
kos omkon 3a hal exemple
mahmoud · 622 weeks and 1 day ago
Here is the tool to find and delete duplicate files "DuplicateFilesDeleter"
ivanden · 616 weeks and 1 day ago
Should be noted that md5sum is not a collision free algorithm, so there's a probability (OK, a very small probability) that the above commands will reports files as dupes even when they're not. Should use a sha1sum if you're paranoid.
befyber · 592 weeks and 3 days ago
Just a thot: Sequence of detection 1. size 2. MAX=say 100Mb or 10 Mb (a) Full MD5 for files (b) MD5 only the first MAX bytes for files > MAX e.g. MD5 (dd if=file of=/tmp/file count=200000) 3. Full MD5 or SHA1 for files found in 2(b) --- Wud b nice for media collection. Any takers??
Atanu · 587 weeks and 2 days ago
Duplicatefilesdeleter is best removal for duplicate files
Ketan · 561 weeks and 1 day ago
I use Duplicate Files Deleter as it is very effective. It is 100% accurate and performs the scan quickly.
rewanya · 538 weeks and 2 days ago
Please use Duplicate files deleter, it is very simple to use. But make it sure to keep the important files in backup. Thanks everybody for giving me your valuable times.
TinaRodrigo · 506 weeks and 3 days ago
ffgg
chenlixiang · 457 weeks and 1 day ago

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Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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