Can you check if files on drive A do not exist anywhere on drive B?

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Posts: 11
Joined: 30 Oct 2018

adios

I'm trying to finally organize my hard drives.
To consolidate data and archive it in a more organized way, otherwise I fear that one day I'll lose something important, never to be found again : /
So I'm using FreeFileSync to help compare folders (there are multiple copies and backups of stuff), backup and move files around.
I was wondering if a certain action is possible to do with FreeFileSync.
Let's say I have 2 hard drives. Drive A which is where I want to store all my images, and drive B which is a hard drive that has all sorts of random stuff in there, including a lot of images that happened to somehow stored there.
I want to move the images from drive B to drive A.
But I want to first see if maybe some images in drive B already exist in drive A. They're just in a different file/folder structure, so I can't compare and find non-duplicates using the normal FreeFileSync comparisons I've been doing.
Basically I want to scan both drives and get a list of which files on drive B do not exist absolutely anywhere on drive A.

Looking forward to help with this, although I have a feeling it might not be possible :S
Thabnks!
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Posts: 143
Joined: 8 Mar 2017

Radish

Hi Adios,

I don't have enough expertise with FFS to say if it can do this but my own usage of it would suggest that it can't.

However, for what it is worth, there a program called WinMerge that does do this. Apart from comparing folders/files it can also open files themselves and show if there are any differences between the two files content, if there are differences it will highlight the differences for you e.g. comparing two certificates files to see if there are differences.

If you want to quickly try out WinMerge without installing it to the system (actually, I think that you can download and use WinMerge as a portable from the parent site) then you can download a fully portablised version from here: WinMerge Portable. If you haven't used any PortableApps before then read this page where there is information to get you started: Portable App Support WinMerge Portable is what I use occasionally, really good app to have in your toolbox.

I'm not entirely clear on what you are trying to do but maybe this will be of some help.

P.S. You do not need to download and use "PortableApps Platform" to use WinMerge Portable.

P.P.S. When WinMerge generates a list of files right-click on file in the listing to see a list of context actions that can be performed on the file(s) from within WinMerge. (That you can do this isn't immediately obvious from just looking at the listing. You can select multiple files at one time, as you would do in Windows Explorer, and perform action 'x' on all of them in one go.)
Posts: 11
Joined: 30 Oct 2018

adios

Thanks Radish, I'll try it!
Just want to mention that, although this thread ended up with me going to try a different software for this particular task, I'm using FFS a whole lot and it's awesome software!
I've donated to the project a couple of times already to keep it well maintained, free and without ads.
I urge people who have used the software with success to do the same:
https://freefilesync.org/download.php

Thanks again Radish