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copy from A -> B only files that are not on B

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frank.thomson
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copy from A -> B only files that are not on B

Post by frank.thomson »

I have lots of old DVD/CD USB sticks hard drives and one brand spanking new NAS drive.

What I would like to do is put each CD in turn into the CD drive and have a program look at the CD and at the NAS and only copy files that are on the CD and not already on the NAS.

Can Syncback do it and if so which version(s)

Thanks, Frsnk
Conrad Chung
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Re: copy from A -> B only files that are not on B

Post by Conrad Chung »

You can try to create a Backup profile to achieve your request.

All variants of SyncBack (Free/SE/Pro) are able to do this. It's up to you to decide which software is better suited for you in view of other additional options, etc.

Here is a comparison chart you can refer to:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/compare.html

Note that certain NAS may have buggy firmware, which as a result ignores our request to/can't properly store the proper Last Modification date/time stamps of files properly. More info here:

http://support.2brightsparks.com/knowle ... -are-wrong
cliffhanger
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Re: copy from A -> B only files that are not on B

Post by cliffhanger »

Note that if the relative paths on the Sources (CDs, USB sticks...) and the NAS are not the same, this will not work to get you a single NAS copy of a multiple-occurring same-file (because SB preserves the relative paths, creating them if necessary).

For example, if you configured your profile to use drive X as Source and your NAS as drive Y:\ (or, \\MYNAS\sharename\ etc) and you had one or more USB sticks with folders\files

\ORIGINALALBUM\FAQ_songname.MP3
\GREATEST_HITS\FAQ_songname.MP3

respectively, it would copy both of them to the NAS (to the relative sub-paths shown, creating those folders in the process), because they are not in the same relative location, so SB doesn't consider them duplicates (which if you take the paths into consideration, they aren't). It would do this regardless of whether FAQ_songname.MP3 was 'the same file contents in two different places', or 'the same name but different file contents (in two different places)'.

(The above is unlikely to occur for music CDs, as they generally don't use folders. But USB sticks, software CDs and other media may well do so.)


But, not being segregated into different paths has its own issues (in respect of what you are asking for). Example: if you had

\SAME_ALBUM_NAME\FAQ_songname.MP3

on two or more USB sticks (or, FAQ_songname.MP3 on more than one music CD) and the names match exactly but the Size or Date/Time stamps are different, and there are no different paths (folders) involved to segregate them, SB may well re-copy the next one it finds over the previous one (because they're different). Yes, this would result in only a single copy, but what if the CDs are by different artists covering the same song? Or the same artist recording rock and acoustic versions? Or, (different) SETUP.EXE or README.TXT files on root of different software CDs? If you kept overwriting 'previous' with 'next', you've lost data...and if you prevent SB taking differences in Size & Date/Time into account (which is optionally possible) so that overwriting didn't occur, you've still lost data because - either way - you still have many (different) same-name versions (on your Sources) but only one copy on the NAS - and it's anyone's guess which one...

SB is not de-duplication software, and doesn't have logic to search for & identify such exact matches (and possibly replace duplicate instances with links to a single master copy, for example). You may want to consider researching the latter instead.
frank.thomson
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Re: copy from A -> B only files that are not on B

Post by frank.thomson »

Thanks guys.
"SB is not de-duplication software, and doesn't have logic to search for & identify such exact matches (and possibly replace duplicate instances with links to a single master copy, for example). You may want to consider researching the latter instead."
I think that is the jist of it. I was not really interested in paths. Just if the file was on the destination somewhere then don't make yet another copy.

Thanks for the quick responses.

BTW, if it's not in conflict with board rules, if anyone knows of such software please let me know. Thanks, Frank
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