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Combining Two Huge Document Folders Into One Without Two Copies Of Same Files [Archive] - PCMech Forums

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Harry
02-27-2003, 02:18 PM
I want to combine all the thousands of files I have in the documents folders of two different hard drives. But the problem is that I have many of the same files and many different files in both of the folders and I don't want two copies of the same file. I just want to make it one complete folder with everything from both document folders. So what is the best way to go about doing this.

Is there anything like some kind of program that when combining two folders will tell me that such and such a document is not in that folder and then ask me if I want to add it? Or is there some other way of doing this.

It wouldn't be such a big deal to do this manually by looking at and comparing the files themselves if there were only like a hundred files in the folders but there are thousands.

Redo40
02-27-2003, 02:24 PM
If you hightlight and drag and drop the files, windows will generally ask if you want to replace a certain file with one you are moving when it comes across files that are named the same. I don't know of any program to help you do that, but maybe someone will come along with one.

reboot
02-27-2003, 03:11 PM
Just use explorer and drag and drop the files. Windows will prompt for you to overwrite or not. You'll end up with only 1 copy of each uniquely named document/file.

Tuf
02-27-2003, 09:00 PM
The only downside is if the older file has actually been updated since the newer one has you will lose the new data.

You should synchronise the folders before you merge them. Depending on which versions of Windows you are using you may not even need any additional software to do it.

David_Jones
03-02-2003, 04:15 PM
When explorer asks you whether to overwrite, it also gives you some info on the two files.

Specifically, it tells you date and time of last modification, which should be enough to tall you which copy to keep.

It might be a pain for half an hour, but it shouldn't be a major issue.

If it is going to be very tedious, you could always drag and drop, say, 200 a day until you get there!

HTH,

David.