IDEA: Program to swap data selections from one drive to another

[FrankEBailey`]

I have several fixed hard drives in my PC as well as several external USB drives. Sometimes I want to take one of the externals to a friend's place, but the data I want to take along is on one of the fixed drives. I'd like a utility that will allow me to select one or more folders' worth of data on the external, then select a similar volume of data on the fixed HD, and will then basically cycle each of the selections to the opposite drive. The end result would be that the data I want to take along (TV show episodes, for example) is now on the external and ready to disconnect and take with me.

The stricture that makes this type of utility very necessary for me is that I often have very little free space on my drives, so doing the copying manually can be quite complicated and time-consuming. It might be plausible to create a RAM-cache for the copy so that minimal drive space doesn't prevent the copying from working...

I hope I'm being clear as to what I'm looking for. Of course, if such a utility exists already I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks, as always, in advance! 

[Darwin]

Interesting idea, and certainly a useful one. I'd be interested in this kind of functionality as well. I wonder if a file/folder synchronizing tool could be used this way? I'm thinking in particular of Super Flexible File Synchronizer.

[FrankEBailey`]

I wonder if a file/folder synchronizing tool could be used this way? I'm thinking in particular of Super Flexible File Synchronizer.

-Darwin (January 19, 2008, 09:32 AM)

As far as I can tell the utility you suggest doesn't seem to have the kind of functionality I'm looking for. Anyone want to try coding something up that performs the basic functions as described?

[Darwin]

Yes, you're right Frank. After posting the above I went off in search of the feature in ANY of the file synching/comparing tools that I have  - none of them feature it, that I can tell. I meant to post back here to that effect and got sidetracked 

[skrommel]

  I don't get this.

I'd like a utility that will allow me to select one or more folders' worth of data on the external, then select a similar volume of data on the fixed HD, and will then basically cycle each of the selections to the opposite drive.

Is it file syncing, or do you mean something else?

Skrommel

[jgpaiva]

External = external disk (aka secondary disk)
Fixed hd = internal disk (aka main disk)
Cycle = Swap (the selected data)

The idea is to select some data on the external disk and on the internal disk, and sqap the selections, so that the internal disk ends up with the data selected on the external disk, and vice-versa. The really important problem here is that the selected data will potentially fill the disk, thus the files have to be moved around taking that into account.