1. In a computing environment, a method comprising: receiving, during a scan of metadata of a file system, file information comprising a set of at least one attribute for each file; performing a hash of at least one attribute of the set for each file into a hash value; maintaining the hash value in association with information that indicates whether a hash value corresponds to more than one file; determining from the information which hash values correspond to groups of potentially duplicate files; and locating file information for at least some of the potentially duplicate files; and determining from the file information which files from among the groups of potentially duplicate files are actual duplicate files of at least one other file.