Windows – Synchronisation software to find files that have moved paths within a folder

syncwindows

Say I have a pictures folder which I reorganized on one computer. I'd like to use that directory as the base and compare it with another version on a backup drive. Will any Synchronisation/compare program find that a file in one folder has moved locations within a compare folder?

For instance, say I reorganized my pictures from trips into folders by year with the trips folders inside each year folder. If I use a regular compare utility I wind up with two copies of everything that's moved in different locations.

Best Answer

I don't know of any software that detects renames/moves across a whole folder hierarchy. That would be fairly slow, as it would have to scan all files to compare them.

The feature was once proposed as a patch for rsync (google for "rsync detect-renamed"), but apparently it was never accepted into rsync.

rsync does have a limited version of what you are looking for:

-y, --fuzzy

This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.

This will not work if you move files between directories, though.

That said, most sync programs do have the option to remove files in the destination if they are missing from the source, so a move should be replicated as new+delete, which requires more copying, but would work.

If you just want to compare drives, not sync them, you could just write a small script that lists all files with their filenames (and maybe a checksum), and import that into a spreadsheet or small db. Then you can sort by filename or checksum, and directly compare the lists of files. That might be the easiest route.

Related Solutions

Windows – Using Dropbox as a backup service

Dropbox provides an official add-on to do this, called Dropbox Folder Sync.

Lets you sync any folder outside dropbox with just a Right-click and Selecting "Sync With Dropbox". So simple . Moves the original folder to dropbox and creates a symbolic link for the folder using the junction utility(installs automatically with the setup) from Sysinternals. Thus you can access the same folder from two locations.

Windows – Command/script to copy files with certain ext, which may have the same name, from folder structure to singe directory and rename

This is a slight work around - I know you wanted to name differently but I wondered if this will work for you.

I would suggest you rename on copy to something like Foldername.Filename.csv.

Use something like

echo f | xcopy /f /y srcfile destfile

EDIT

I have tried for a few hours, I don't think what you want is possible with the CMD prompt or bat files.

This is what I have

set sDir=C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop
set dDir="C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop\Folder\"

cd C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop\
FOR /F %%a in ("*.txt") DO (     
    xcopy "%%a" "C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop\Folder\"
    cd\ 
    cd C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop\Folder\
    ren "%%a" "newName-%dir%.txt"
    cd\
    cd C:\Documents and Settings\drook\Desktop\
)

pause

It fails on the rename because it ignores the variable. So where I'm showing newName-%dir% (where dir is the variable) it would fail on newName-%%a as well...

Sorry, I don't think it is possible.

Having said that, this makes it look like it is possible: windows-batch-file-to-copy-and-keep-duplicates

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Using Dropbox as a backup service

Windows – Command/script to copy files with certain ext, which may have the same name, from folder structure to singe directory and rename

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