Folder Sync or Folder Compare

[cthomas]

After serval years of not having good Image file management I now have thousands of image files scattered all over my system in about 12 drives. If you take a look at my attachment it will help you understand where I'm at and what I'm trying to do.

I have a Base folder on drive P:\Good Images. I use this Base folder on the Left side. I then need to go into each of these drives and do a Sync/Compare of folders on these drives. I want to Move All of my images into this one Base folder. But I do not want any duplicates.

After I have all of my images in one location and I'm sure they are Good files. Then I want to delete all of the others.

Now the question. How can I do this in BC3? I have spent the last two days reading the help files and looking at the Videos but Im still

[cthomas]

After serval years of not having good Image file management I now have thousands of image files scattered all over my system in about 12 drives. If you take a look at my attachment it will help you understand where I'm at and what I'm trying to do.

I have a Base folder on drive P:\Good Images. I use this Base folder on the Left side. I then need to go into each of these drives and do a Sync/Compare of folders on these drives. I want to Move All of my images into this one Base folder. But I do not want any duplicates.

After I have all of my images in one location and I'm sure they are Good files. Then I want to delete all of the others.

Now the question. How can I do this in BC3? I have spent the last two days reading the help files and looking at the Videos but Im still

I was hoping that someone would have given me some suggestions on how to do this.

But I have to get started on this now. I think I'm going to try a Folder Sync.
Please. Suggestions.

[Aaron]

Hello,

Your files are scattered; are they also in different subdirectory structures? If so, the only way to compare is to set the base folders in such a way that the structure matches and the files align, or to Ignore Folder Structure. However, to enable View menu -> Ignore Folder Structure will only work if all of your files have unique names. If there are any duplicated names in the base folders, then this option may not align the files correctly, and you will need to manually double-check any duplicate names in the list.

I would suggest starting with subfolders of your drives (e:\basefolder1 or e:\subfolder\basefolder compared to P:\good images\), and cut the process into smaller, more manageable pieces. If there are no duplicates, you can then enable Ignore Folder Structure to remove subfolders from view, and show one large list of files sorted by name. You can run a timestamp/size comaprison, a binary comparison, or double-click to view any particular pair of files.

Does this help? Let us know if you have any questions.

[snidely.too]

I would suggest starting with subfolders of your drives (e:\basefolder1 or e:\subfolder\basefolder compared to P:\good images\), and cut the process into smaller, more manageable pieces. If there are no duplicates, you can then enable Ignore Folder Structure to remove subfolders from view, and show one large list of files sorted by name. You can run a timestamp/size comaprison, a binary comparison, or double-click to view any particular pair of files.

I haven't played with workspaces much, but I'm thinking that this might be a good place for them. Open up the first set of subfolders as a new folder compare, adjust the settings for the view and comparison wanted, save the session. Open a new session and select the saved session for it, and navigate to the next set of subfolders. Save the session (with a different name). Lather, rinse, repeat until you have the set of sessions you want, and the save the workspace. Load the workspace when you want to work on the consolidation some more.

Your files are scattered; are they also in different subdirectory structures? If so, the only way to compare is to set the base folders in such a way that the structure matches and the files align, or to Ignore Folder Structure. However, to enable View menu -> Ignore Folder Structure will only work if all of your files have unique names. If there are any duplicated names in the base folders, then this option may not align the files correctly, and you will need to manually double-check any duplicate names in the list.

I had an idea for another approach here. You can use the nifty utility Search Everything from voidtools.com http://www.voidtools.com/, search for the file types you want
(if you enable regex in that tool, then "(mp4|mov)" will find all the clips of those 2 types. Then use their context menu to select the BC3 comparisons on individual pairs of files; that works just like doing the comparison from Windows Explorer.

Good luck!

/dps

[Lutz]

I'm frequently using BC to search for any files.

I created a folder "devices" containing empty folders for every device holding junctions to the devices.
So I'm able to collect all devices in one BC-session (until multiple base folders make it into BC).

After scanning all devices (~15s for 150k files) I apply the name filter i am looking for (Session Settings/Name Filters/Include Files).

Greetings Lutz

[snidely.too]

I'm frequently using BC to search for any files.

I created a folder "devices" containing empty folders for every device holding junctions to the devices.
So I'm able to collect all devices in one BC-session (until multiple base folders make it into BC).

After scanning all devices (~15s for 150k files) I apply the name filter i am looking for (Session Settings/Name Filters/Include Files).

Greetings Lutz

Interesting. Is this for a version of Windows? If so, what do you use to make the junctions?

/dps

[Lutz]

I'm simply using the disk managment (diskmgmt.msc) to assign a mount-point folder path to a drive. I believe this is available since NTFS was introduced (W2000/XP).

Greetings Lutz