Software for Finding Files Unique to one Drive or Folder

[Policar]

The title doesn't explain this very well, my apologies.

I have a hard drive with a bunch of files on it.

I have another drive with a bunch of the same files on it. And maybe some other ones, too.

I'm trying to do a comprehensive back up and I'd like to find software to identify which files are in one drive (or in one folder) but not in another. So I can just copy those over. I've considered just copying everything over and doing a duplicate search but there's too much data and too many files for this to be feasible. Most everything is organized differently on each drive.

Does such software exist?

Thanks!

 

[Evaldas]

“ForkLift”. It is not cheap, but you can use a free old version from the App Store (still works with macOS Catalina), it will help you with your question on cruise control.

Just open your drives or any folders in the app, then choose File > Sync to…, and review their differences.

‎ForkLift - File Manager and FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/Amazon S3 client

‎*** ForkLift 3 is currently not available in the Mac App Store. To avoid confusion we made ForkLift 2 free. If you purchased ForkLift 2 here and wish to upgrade to ForkLift 3 please visit our website for more information*** ForkLift is a robust and elegant Finder replacement and FTP + SFTP +...

apps.apple.com

 

[mailbuoy]

The title doesn't explain this very well, my apologies.

I have a hard drive with a bunch of files on it.

I have another drive with a bunch of the same files on it. And maybe some other ones, too.

I'm trying to do a comprehensive back up and I'd like to find software to identify which files are in one drive (or in one folder) but not in another. So I can just copy those over. I've considered just copying everything over and doing a duplicate search but there's too much data and too many files for this to be feasible. Most everything is organized differently on each drive.

Does such software exist?

Thanks!

Maybe, copy one drive to the other and when Finder says file already exists, just select skip, and skip for all future cases... Then you should have one drive with one copy of everything. Yes?

 

[Policar]

“ForkLift”. It is not cheap, but you can use a free old version from the App Store (still works with macOS Catalina), it will help you with your question on cruise control.

Just open your drives or any folders in the app, then choose File > Sync to…, and review their differences.

‎ForkLift - File Manager and FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/Amazon S3 client

‎*** ForkLift 3 is currently not available in the Mac App Store. To avoid confusion we made ForkLift 2 free. If you purchased ForkLift 2 here and wish to upgrade to ForkLift 3 please visit our website for more information*** ForkLift is a robust and elegant Finder replacement and FTP + SFTP +...

apps.apple.com

Thanks, it didn't seem to work and required I install Xcode. But I'm going to try it again.

Maybe, copy one drive to the other and when Finder says file already exists, just select skip, and skip for all future cases... Then you should have one drive with one copy of everything. Yes?

Unfortunately there are hundreds if not thousands of sub-folders involved, organized differently in each case. I'm backing up a lot of stuff and it will probably never be perfect but I'm trying.
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I'm not explaining this very well. The situation is similar to this:

I have a back up that I think has everything backed up and organized.

But I have a few other drives (okay, like 10, over 100TB) that I worry have unique files that I forgot to back up.

How do I compare the contents of the drives to hunt down these files? Thanks.

 

[Evaldas]

Thanks, it didn't seem to work and required I install Xcode. But I'm going to try it again.

Yes, Xcode is required, but for another feature — compare only two files by their text content.

 

[ventmore]

This disk cataloging software looks like it should do the job:

Find Duplicates in NeoFinder

NeoFinder is a powerful and very fast disk cataloging tool for songs, videos, photos, all your digital documents

www.cdfinder.de

 

[Policar]

This disk cataloging software looks like it should do the job:

Find Duplicates in NeoFinder

NeoFinder is a powerful and very fast disk cataloging tool for songs, videos, photos, all your digital documents

www.cdfinder.de

View attachment 903728

Thanks, this appears to be the best option. But when I use it it hangs up due to disk errors I think. I'm just going to say forget it and live with an incomplete backup I think. But in the future I will keep this in mind.

When it hangs, is there a way to have it skip a file?

 

[ventmore]

Thanks, this appears to be the best option. But when I use it it hangs up due to disk errors I think. I'm just going to say forget it and live with an incomplete backup I think. But in the future I will keep this in mind.

When it hangs, is there a way to have it skip a file?

I haven’t used it so I couldn’t say. I just remembered coming across it a few years ago when someone posted a similar question.

 

[ventmore]

Thanks, this appears to be the best option. But when I use it it hangs up due to disk errors I think. I'm just going to say forget it and live with an incomplete backup I think. But in the future I will keep this in mind.

When it hangs, is there a way to have it skip a file?

There’s a troubleshooting page for the app with some suggestions to deal with it hanging:

NeoFinder Troubleshooting

NeoFinder is a powerful and very fast disk cataloging tool for songs, videos, photos, all your digital documents

www.cdfinder.de

 

[Michael778]

Thanks for the info @Evaldas

 

[Policar]

With Neofinder it's able to find unique files or duplicates, and I can find unique files on one volume or another–but the unique files don't register as unique if there are duplicates on the same volume. So it's not differencing the volumes, you just finding what's unique generally across two volumes.

I want to find which files haven't been backed up on the master drive.

Is there any software specifically for this?

Going to try Forklift again.

 

[ventmore]

I suppose you could check each volume for duplicates first. Once you’ve gotten rid of the duplicates on each volume, you could check them against the master drive.

 

[McCrab]

Have found Gemini 2 to be reliable for this kind of de-dup exercise...

Gemini 2: The Best Duplicate File Finder for Mac. Smart selection and fast scan.

Meet Gemini 2, a smart duplicate file finder for Mac. Get rid of duplicate photos, find duplicates in iTunes, and even choose the extras among similar files (like pictures from different angles).

macpaw.com