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IDEA: Folder Merge

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mateek:
I used to back up on a USB external, but I downsized to laptop hard drives, which go in Thinkpad caddies I have.  I started running out of room at one point, and started on a second old hard drive.  Then maybe a third.  Recently, I bought a 160GB that should last me the rest of my life.  I put two of the three drives on the large one, and forgot one, and added to another when the big wasn't handy, etc, and lost track.

Now I'm hoping to reclaim the littler drives and sell them, or put them in other laptops.

The one thing that these tend to have in common is the folder names.  I think the safest thing to do is just do a cut of each folder and paste it onto the new drive, but as I was taring my hair out over the Duplicate finder that stopped working well for me, and contemplating the cut and paste of many folders, I thought, how about something that merges folders with the exact names.

I guess the downside might be overwriting on the long-shot two files have the same name as I do the cut-paste by hand, so even if the program was that simple, I'd be happy.  Also, since I use a big Thinkpad dock, I'd want the ability to merge two to a third hard drive.  I wouldn't mind waiting as "Folder Merge" worked sequentially, instead of reconfiguring twice, or more.  Maybe somebody has a need to merge a higher number of drives onto a single big drive. 

Of course making the option to 'cut' or 'copy' from each drive would be nice, if possible.

Has anybody heard of anything that does this already?

I guess as it evolved for many drives, it would need to go on a wizard, that ran a dry run for duplicate folder names first, and then allowed exceptions, and asked to continue the merge.  At first, maybe the program could just merge what the operator selected with a confirm box.

I hope this is someone's gold. 

PPLandry:
Have you tried free SyncToy (from MS, current is 2.0)? It has decent options for syncing drives (sync, contribute, echo).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&DisplayLang=en

mateek:
Thanks, I'd seen SyncToy before, although I've never tried it.  I've been using SyncBack SE, as I needed the added features, but what I really was thinking of, is for a program that simply scans for identical folder names on two or more drives, and then puts the contents all in one of those drives. 

It might be like a Scansoft approach or something, with a kind of three button approach.  1, scan the selected drives (maybe a message "Folders with the same name found").   2, choose the target drive, maybe pick whether to cut and paste (delete) or copy, and 3, maybe the possibility to move non-target duplicates to a new unified location.

Even a program with just the first two steps would be unlike anything I've seen out there, and a big help.

Right now it seems the programs out there can't be exclusive unless you start checking and unchecking directories one by one on a macro level, or create a profile one at a time for each folder.

This is the problem with mixed disks, but everyone thinks they're mirrors or too small a job for this type of need.

PPLandry:
Thanks, I'd seen SyncToy before, although I've never tried it.  I've been using SyncBack SE, as I needed the added features, but what I really was thinking of, is for a program that simply scans for identical folder names on two or more drives, and then puts the contents all in one of those drives. 
-mateek (September 14, 2008, 11:28 AM)
--- End quote ---

SyncToy does this quite well IMO. This is called Contribute. Setup is easy and you do not need to check each folder individually. Version 2.0 has a number of improvements, to help this.

mateek:
I just tried SyncToy 2.0, as you suggested, and it asks for folders one by one, and does them one at a time.  How is this the same as I'm trying to accomplish?

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