I need to backup about 4 TB worth of data. Because this will take a long time, and I don't want to risk the process getting stopped at some unknown point during a power outage and having to work out what copied right and what didn't, I'm doing a manual copy a few folders at a time first, creating a folder structure to mirror what's on the drive I want to back up just using regular windows copy and paste to an external drive.
When I'm done, I'd like to use freefilesync to do the consequent incremental backups later, having it copy anything new that isn't on the existing backup I will have created.
My question is -- Can this be done? Or will it not be able to recognize the backup drive as being the same because I created new folders with the same names, and copied the files over myself first, not through freefilesync itself? I'm not sure what process it uses to tell if the files are the same.
Can I copy my files first normally using windows, then use this after?
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That should work quite fine.
FreeFileSync (FFS) will simply Compare your left and right-side location(s) and determine the sync actions to achieve the sync result corresponding to the selected sync variant.
However, if you selected to use a database ("Use database to detect changes"), that database will only be created at the end of running your first FFS sync between the left and right locations involved in your sync.
FreeFileSync (FFS) will simply Compare your left and right-side location(s) and determine the sync actions to achieve the sync result corresponding to the selected sync variant.
However, if you selected to use a database ("Use database to detect changes"), that database will only be created at the end of running your first FFS sync between the left and right locations involved in your sync.
