Start with what your OS already gives you
Windows' Storage Sense and macOS's Storage Management both show you which folders are largest, which is a reasonable first stop if your drive is full. But neither one tells you which files are duplicates. They show size, not sameness, so two folders that are each 5 GB look identical to these tools whether they contain the same photos twice or completely different ones.
Sorting by name and size only gets you so far
The next instinct is usually to sort a folder by size or name and eyeball it for copies. That works for obvious cases, like a file literally named "IMG_0231 (1).jpg", but it falls apart the moment a duplicate was renamed, moved to a different folder, or resaved by a different app. Same content, different name, and a manual scan misses it entirely.
The fastest reliable method: hash-based scanning
A hash-based scanner reads every file's actual contents and produces a fingerprint, a hash, that's identical only if the bytes are identical. Two files with the same hash are true duplicates, regardless of what they're named or where they're sitting. That's the method DataBurrow uses under the hood; we've written about the mechanics of it in detail if you want to go deeper.
A five-minute walkthrough
Point DataBurrow at a drive and let it index, which reads each file's name, size, type, and hash without touching the contents. Once indexing finishes, switch to the duplicates view, which groups every set of true byte-for-byte matches together. From there you can preview each match side by side before deciding anything.
What to do once you've found them
Finding duplicates is the easy part; deciding what to do with them is where people get nervous, especially if the files matter. DataBurrow is read-only by default: it shows you the matches and lets you pick what happens next, nothing is moved or deleted without your explicit confirmation.