What do you/would you recommend to merge files from several backup hard drives? I have 3 machines each with a 2nd HDD I use for non-OS storage. I would like to merge ALL files and get rid of duplicate copies and send to one (external) HDD, but each drive is on a different PC. TIA, Ishtim
The question is, how would you know which version you would like to keep, and which you would not need it anymore?
Maybe you can consider using this: Duplicate Commander Removes Duplicate Files, Replaces Them with Hard Links then just copy/merge the files from all HDD together after you have removed the duplicates.
A cheap (well, free) way would be to use SyncBack Free and "back up" all your hard disk drives into a single hard disk drive. SyncBack Free can detect duplicates and you can set it to either ignore or replace according to whether the files are larger and/or newer.
Thanks for everyones input! Free is certainly hard to beat! I am merging mostly photos so which "version" may/may not be an issue, perhaps the software is smart enough to see the IMG_001.jpg (700KB, taken on 10/10/10 is different than one that has same name and is different size and different create date. Almost sounds like a Linux shell homework problem that I have no free time to do. Maybe I should setup test case and see just how risky this seems. In the past I'd just zip the files on the drive but I have gotten lazy and even my 500GB drives are >80% probably half of which is diplicate stuff from old backups.
SyncBank Free will only attempt to filter duplicates when merging folders with identical names. You can set up multiple profiles for different folders, and even simulate the back up and merging process, before actually doing it.