PC utilities: Can I merge two large collections of files?

by MAFinOKC - 8/11/07 10:12 PM

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Can I merge two large collections of files?

by MAFinOKC - 8/11/07 10:12 PM

I'm using Win XP (Home at home and Pro at work). I'm in the process of scanning 25 years of professional documents as PDF files prior to disposal of the paper copies. I'm doing some at home and some at the office. Both at home and at work, I'm saving the documents in a single large folder with many subfolders and sub-subfolders. I'm creating the subfolder categories as I go, and they differ somewhat between home and work. I estimate that the total disk space of both sets of files combined will be 3-4 gigabytes. What I would like to do, if possible, is copy all the files from my home computer to a CD, take them to the office, and merge them with the files and folders on my work computer. Is there any utility or program that will automatically synchronize two large sets of files and folders in this way?

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Windows should do this.

by MarkFlax

- 8/12/07 5:41 AM In reply to: Can I merge two large collections of files? by MAFinOKC

If those files have not been edited or otherwise changed, eg the file names remain the same, then Windows should be able to do this for you.

When you attempt to "Paste" a file into a folder and that folder already has a file with that name in it, Windows will display a warning that you are trying to replace an existing file. It offers you the option to continue or to cancel.

If you have a group of files you are trying to paste into a folder and more than one file name is the same, then Windows will off the options to [ Replace the exisiting file ], [ Replace All ], [ No ], or [ Cancel ].

If you select "Replace All", then Windows will do all the work for you. If you select "No", then Windows will skip the one file and try the next, and if necessary display the same warning.

This will only work if the file names are the same, (including the file extension). If you decided to try it, I would use two different methods.

1] Test it on one or two first.

2] Do not copy and paste from the CD to the original hard drive folder. Instead, copy the hard drive folder to some other location on the hard drive, then copy/paste all of the files from the CD to the copied folder. That way, if an error occurs, you still have the originals and will have saved a ton of remedial work. This method wastes space initially, but once everything is done and satisfactory, you can then delete the original folder and use the copied one.

If the files are identical but the file names are different, then I am not sure if there is a way to do this. Whatever utility you tried would have to scan each of the source files against each of the destination files to search for identical files. That could be a long process.

I hope that helps.

Mark