I have a folder on Drive 1 called Music, and it is 100GB. I have a folder on Drive 2 called Music, and it is 116GB. It's the most updated version. How do I copy the Music folder from Drive 2 to Drive 1 without having to rewrite every single file?
Copy new files only – is this possible? Basically want to merge two folders
copy/pastefilefoldersmerge
Related Solutions
You can open Terminal and use one of the following (rsync would probably be the one for you if you want something that won't be completely lost if you halt the process):
The standard UNIX way
cp -R -v source/. destination
The geeky UNIX way (restartable)
rsync -vaEW source/ destination
The OSX "easy" way
ditto -V source destination
- Select the folder you wish to copy.
- Press command + C. This will copy the folder to clipboard.
- At the destination, press command + V. This will copy the folder to your current folder. If a folder with the same name exists, you will be give options to Stop, Merge or Replace.
Quirk: This doesn’t work if you try to move (by dragging), not copy, a folder from one place to another. However, if you still wish to use dragging and dropping, drag with the option key pressed. This will copy, instead of move, a file/folder from one place to another.
This is what you will see if you copy a folder named “Temp” to a folder named “untitled folder” which already contains a folder named “Temp”.
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Best Answer
The merge option will only show up if you are copying (rather than moving) the folder. Make sure you hold option while you drag the new folder to the location of the old folder. Alternatively, using ⌘+c to copy the new folder and ⌘+v to paste over the old folder should give you the option to merge the files.