Copying files & avoiding duplicates - weird issue.

[Donka]

Okay,I'm looking to take a back up of my media folder to an external drive on an ad hoc basis.
If I go into my media folder and select all movies and copy them to the external drive, I want to avoid copying over existing files.
I get the prompt to skip, replace or stop. If I press skip for each file then it does skip them. If I check the apply to all and then hit skip, it starts to copy all files i.e. 500+ movie files instead of only the 20 new files that I would expect.
Does anyone else see this or am I doing something wrong?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Finder is not the best when it comes to such issues.

Take a look at CarbonCopyCloner (version 3.4.7 is still free and available for download here and works with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion) or SuperDuper! for such copying and backup issues, they can even be scheduled.

 

[Donka]

Thanks. CCC may be overkill for my needs but I just tried a test again remotely on my machine with a small test folder and it game me the option of replacing or not replacing existing files. I did the apply to all and do not replace and it worked as expected. I'll look more into this over the weekend when I find the time.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks. CCC may be overkill for my needs but I just tried a test again remotely on my machine with a small test folder and it game me the option of replacing or not replacing existing files. I did the apply to all and do not replace and it worked as expected. I'll look more into this over the weekend when I find the time.

You could automate this fairly easily using the command line tool rsync that comes with your Mac. Give this a look.

The Terminal command would look something like this:

rsync -av --ignore-existing /path/to/source /path/to/destination

You need to replace the path info with your own. Once you get this nailed down you could save it as an app in Applescript editor then just run the app to do your routine copying.

If you need a hand doing this, just let me know the source and destination paths and I can work it out.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could automate this fairly easily using the command line tool rsync that comes with your Mac.

CCC uses that command to, just so you know.

Give this a look.

The Terminal command would look something like this:

rsync -av --ignore-existing /path/to/source /path/to/destination

What about files, that have been updated? CCC moves the old version into the archive and copies the new version to the backup, and since it is an RSYNC command I suppose, it can be done via Terminal too?

 

[Weaselboy]

CCC uses that command to, just so you know.

I am aware of that, but OP said he he believed CCC may not be the solution he is after. My thought is once the correct rsync command is dialed in and saved as an app. OP could just plug in his external drive and click the app icon in the dock and be done with it.

What about files, that have been updated? CCC moves the old version into the archive and copies the new version to the backup, and since it is an RSYNC command I suppose, it can be done via Terminal too?

By default rsync will not delete files on the destination that are not found on the source. This can be changed with the -d (delete) flag. I am not aware of an rsync command that moves old versions on the destination.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I am aware of that, but OP said he he believed CCC may not be the solution he is after. My thought is once the correct rsync command is dialed in and saved as an app. OP could just plug in his external drive and click the app icon in the dock and be done with it.

Sorry, was not aimed at you, but at the OP, to show him or her, that CCC just uses an already existing protocol, with a nice fancy GUI, but then again, I needed another post.

 

[Donka]

Thanks guys for your input - much appreciated. I'll play around with Finder over the weekend and failing that I'll look at the rsync command. I'm fine with working in the terminal and saving what works as an app. You are right in your assumption about the same paths being used each time I do this copy so setting it up as an app would work fine.