Renamed / moved files

[pollux]

I have a problem seeing when FFS will do a move/rename after the compare rather than a new copy operation. Only after I process the changes, it becomes clear that FFS did a move/rename. All my tests were done as a full sync operation.

The compare result difference will only show that one file only exist in the left and another file exists only in the right while their size is the same. The action will be to "copy new item to right" for the renamed file and "delete right item" for the old file (name it had before rename). The same view will be present if there were two new files in the two directories.

Compare using file time and size or only by size will give the same result. When doing a compare on file content it will tag the file that was not renamed with the "can't determine" action.

Is there a way to see which files have been moved / renamed / deleted and not just which files are different in the left/right folder?

Note that "rename" in this case means that the file has changed name within the same folder. "Move" means that the file kept its old file name, but is now in a different directory. FFS seems to be able to handle both rename and move, as long as the compare is using File Time and Size, but not a double action like renamed and moved (which is fair).

[Plerry]

If you have enabled the Detect Moved Files option in the FFS sync settings (F8) (which is standard/mandatory for a Two-way sync), after running the sync FFS creates a database at both the left-and right sync location.
FFS also uses this database to detect moved or renamed files, provided the file system and OS support the use of File-IDs.
Essentially: moved or renamed files of which the File_ID has not changed, will be moved or renamed in the opposing sync location. If the File-ID has changed or is not (properly) supported, moved or renamed files will be deleted from and copied to the opposing sync location.
I am not aware that the difference between the two cases is visible in the Compare results.