Syncing two folders

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I have two folders that are supposed to be kept identical, but I allowed them to get out of sync on different computers.

Both have files the other does not. Most methods I know would involve overwriting one folder with the other. I want something to drill down through a complex folder hierarchy and only replace files that are newer than the old ones while copying any missing files.

The newer version might be in either folder.

I do not want to waste the time it would take to replace identical duplicates. This is several gigabytes of data in thousands of files.

I thought using the copy command would work, if I hit shift-N the first time it asked about duplicates, but it seems it will stop looking for files after the first level of folders.

I thought about the old MS-DOS backup and restore commands, but they apparently were dropped with Windows XP, or were never in the NT line of products.

Could somebody suggest a program or procedure to go through and sync up the two folders, copying what is not present on one computer to the other, or what is updated, and not overwriting the duplicates with the same size and date?

One computer is a dual-boot Windows 98SE and Windows XP professional. The other is a dual boot of 64-bit Windows Vista Home and 7 Professional.
Primarily I'm running the later OSes, and I rarely boot Vista except when my aunt needs help with her laptop, but I'll take any solution that works for this one-time only task. Afterwards I'll give the Microsoft Sync toy a trial run, but first I need something that works like the old MS-DOS BACKUP command and only replaces newer files to get them synced.

 

What do you mean "stop looking"? I've copied whole hierarchies of folders on multiple occasions in the past and it's always asked what to do about files even if they were more than one folder deep. Of course, the default copy options are lacking at best.

But anyway, what you actually want is the Xcopy command which can be run from the command prompt. Use the /d switch (with no date argument) to only copy files that are newer than the destination files.

Or, if you're on the newer systems (like Win 7), you can use Robocopy. This one is much more efficient and you can run it multithreaded with the /mt switch. You can use the /xo switch to exclude older files. If you wanna make the whole thing much simpler you can also download the Robocopy GUI published by TechNet Magazine or the RichCopy tool that is also linked to in that article which is supposed to be an improved version.

 

I never could get Robocopy to work right for some reason, yet I've never had a problem with Microsoft's syntax explanations for other commands dating back to the MS-DOS era. I always assumed that there were errors in the help text that they copied to the webpage.
Thanks for the link to the GUI, I'll be trying it later when I'm ready to lock up both computers for a while. I've put a movie on reserve at the library, so I'll do the copy and then pop in the tape err, disc.
I guess I'm showing my age, I think of borrowing tapes from the library or renting them from Blockbuster, rather than DVDs.

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Oh, do I need to map the network share to a drive letter to use Robocopy?

 

I don't think it should be necessary, but I've never tried using it with shared folders. The GUI (or at least RichCopy) should be able to handle it, otherwise just use the standard notation for accessing shared folders (e.g. \\sharedcomputer\drive$\somefolder\)

Edit: Maybe a better example would be "\\Bob\D$\Games". I sometimes make examples generic to the point where it's actually confusing.

 

I never understood why normal file explorer programs never have the simple options like a fairly basic FTP client would have. Like "copy if newer". Would be so useful sometimes.

Otherwise, it should be fairly simple to write a script to do this in something like Python, but that's probably a bit overkill if there's ready-to-use programs that can do it easily as well.

 

It'd be nice if these options were already in explorer, yeah, but I imagine extra options would confuse plebs-*khem* I mean average users. This way, unsavvy people are happy, and advanced users can make use of programs like xcopy and robocopy which ship with the system (assuming they don't already use alternatives to standard explorer).

 

GS/OS, the Apple IIGS version of the Mac OS, had it so that if you held down the <OPTION> key on the keyboard while coping a file using the Finder (optional in GS/OS), you got presented with a dialog box with the options to

1. Ask about each duplicate case by case
2. Don't replace any duplicate items
3. Replace all duplicate items

I never understood why that feature was not implemented on the Mac as well, nor why they didn't give anything similar in Windows.

I should also mention that an Apple IIGS was my first computer, and it came with GS/OS 4.0.

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OK, I give up.
How do you use Robocopy or even Xcopy to check an entire directory tree with many nested folders to see if each file within exists in the other folder, and only copy if the file either doesn't exist or is newer than the destination folder.

Robocopy with the /e and the /xo seems to only check the first level of folders, and if it sees all the folders are there, doesn't delve into them to compare the individual files in the nested directories.

Could somebody give me the syntax to sync a folder in Cusers\public\documents\FAQs which has folders for each game I own on it with \\slickswintel\FAQS
I assume I can do the same for FF, which has even more levels of nested folders.

FF has fanfiction stories sorted by primary series, then usually by author or series, then in some multi-chaptered stories each story has its own folder if it is in multiple files.

Code:

Robocopy /e /xo E:\ff \\slickswintel\ff 

seems to only look at the first level of folders and ignores any folders that don't have changed dates, so if the folder with a changed date is nested two levels down, nothing gets updated.

 

https://billing.holodyn.com/knowledgebase/24/Using-XCOPY-to-Synchronize-Folders.html

Wouldn't this suffice?

 

XCOPY seemed to only check the first level of subdirectories, which had unchanged dates.
This was the parameter I tried:

Code:

xcopy E:\ff \\slickswintel\ff /d /e /f

 

Let me Try.

 

Go ahead, it's been nearly a year, but I won't mind having an easy way to do this. The correct commands for robocopy or xcopy would be appreciated. Feel free to use post #10 as a guide for the example of the directories I want to sync. Eff and \\slickswintel\ff
Although I could do it the other way around if necessary, set up a share for EFF. Bear in mind that Slickswintel is a Windows 98SE/Windows XP dual-boot computer that is the main file and print server for my home network, and also what I use to play old games like Baldur's Gate on (it was not obsolete when I got Baldur's Gate I, but actually my primary and best computer).