A little computer help??

[Joe Chritz]

I am looking for a way to copy very large folders from one harddrive to another. Doing a complete copy through windows explorer is easy but it does not give an option to skip existing files that I am away of.

Basically I have an internal hardrive that holds a couple very large picture and music folders. I have additions to those folders (pictures at least) weekly and want to have them both available on the desktop internal and the usb external that gets moved from computer to computer.

Is there an easy way to do this without doing a complete copy each time? I only need it to check the files and add the missing ones.

I figured some genius on here would have an answer.

Thanks

Joe

[Bill Edwards(2)]

When you select all and copy and paste you get a window that gives you

options. Yes, Yes to All, etc.

It does not give you No to All, but you can make it happen by holding the shift

key down when you select 'No'

I found it displays the window twice (had to click No both times), but if you

are copying 100 files, say 80 are duplicates... twice is all you get.

This was Windows XP, if you're running something else, just test it.

[Graham Wintersgill]

Joe

Can you use DOS or access a command window?

If you go START / Run and then type cmd in the little window and press enter.

That will open a DOS window.

Now move to the directory the files to be copied are in

chdir C:\bigfiles

would move you to the directory bigfiles on the C drive. Now the xcopy command

xcopy *.* E:\copy_bigfiles /D

this will copy everything over if big_files is empty but once some files are there it will only copy files that are newer than those in E:\copy_bigfiles.

If you need any help or want it turned into a batvh job that you can run from an icon on the desktop PM me.

Regards

[fred marcuson]

in xp , there is a backup program ..or restore program .
i just choose the 'let me choose ' box and back up my music and pics ...

[Curt Harms]

Joe, if I understand you correctly, you want to synchronize two directories. When I used Windows mostly I used to use this a lot. It's a far superior file manager to Windows Explorer IMO and it has file synchronization among its other talents.
http://www.avanquest.com/USA/software/powerdesk-pro-8-138876?rs2=AQ_US_BN. There's a trialware version floating around-powerdesk6- which kind of gives a feel for the program but it's crippled and one of the things that doesn't work is file synchronization. And it doesn't work in Vista or 7, just XP & earlier.

[Bryan Morgan]

You need some kind of syncronization application (I'd recommend peersync but I think its kind of expensive). I think you can do what your want just using ntbackup though. Set it up to do scheduled incremental backups and just to copy the files rather than compress or archive them. I believe Windows 7 has file syncing capabilities built in. You can use the built in task scheduler to schedule copies/syncs or schedule running Robocopy, Teracopy or something similar.

[paul cottingham]

try syncback. really easy, and works great.

[Todd Willhoit]

Microsoft SyncToy is useful for synchronizing folders between drives or even pc to pc.

If you are looking for a file manager type program, try Total Commander, found here: www.ghisler.com (http://www.ghisler.com) The file copy/move routine provides several options including skipping existing files with the same date stamp. It has many other useful features too.

[Chuck Wintle]

try syncback. really easy, and works great.

+1 on syncback free edition. works well, easy to use and does incremental backups.

[Curt Harms]

+1 on syncback free edition. works well, easy to use and does incremental backups.

I forgot about syncback. That does indeed work well.

[Matt Meiser]

I use this command to back up our photos, music, etc:

xcopy /s /e /v /c /d /y [source folder]\* [dest folder]

s means copy sub directories except empty ones (I really don't need this but its habit.)
e means copy sub directories including empty ones
v means verify the data after copy
c means continue if an error occurs (i.e. a locked file won't block it from finishing the rest)
d means everything where the source is newer than the destination
y means answer yes to any overwrite prompts

so you could do something like
xcopy /s /e /v /c /d /y "c:\Joes Photos\*" "e:\Joes Photos Backup\"
and only new or newly-modified files will copy

[Eric DeSilva]

+1 for synctoy. I think it may be included in the free MS powertoys or maybe a separate download. Simple and it works. You can actually schedule it to run on periodic basis.