Windows has a default Search for Files and Folders utility but the feature it lacks is the searching the duplicate files and folders present in the hard disk.
I come across a useful tool called SearchMyFiles that is in fact the alternative to the default Windows’ Search for files and folders option. SearchMyFiles also allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content (text or binary search), and by the file size.
Not only this, SearchMyFiles allows you to make a very accurate search that cannot be done with Windows search. For Example: You can search all files created in the last 10 minutes with size between 500 and 700 bytes. After you made a search, you can select one or more files, and save the list into text/html/csv/xml file, or copy the list to the clipboard.
The tool is free and portable that is it requires no installation and can be run directly from the USB drive as well thereby not leaving any traces in the registry. The tool is supported on all versions of windows starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 7.
Although this utility is useful, it really does not deal with the problem of duplicate files. Duplicate files clog our system and slow down the computer. Eventhough these files can be searched for and removed manually, it is a mind numbing task. Therefore it is best to employ a software which compares files bit by bit for this purpose.