I have multiple folders containing thousands of deletion-recovered files from multiple recovery scans.
As per usual with deletion recovery, the recovered files have different names than the originals, and different names from one recovery scan to another.
So, short of writing a custom program, is there a tool (or product) that can compare files by content and ignore the filenames?
Ideally, it would allow deletion of recovered files when they content-match files in an "original" directory tree (e.g. iTunes library folders),
and, allow merge of two folders based on file contents rather than filenames.
Best Answer
Why wouldn't you have a script to loop over all the files and rename them with the value of a hash based on the file contents.
I've listed these in order of fastest to slowest on my Mac - you should test for a few files if you can't just let the script run overnight and do care about performance of the script.
Then you could merge based on file name since the same content would be the same name, barring any collisions in the space of the hash.