The agony of backing up 80gb of music.

I have roughly 80gb of music and I like to, from time to time, back it up on my external hard drive. The only problem is i have to delete the existing back up and drag all 80gbs of it and watch it transfer for 2 hours. Is there a way, or program that i can use that will simply add only what doesn't exist in the folder rather then every single file(which means duplicates).


It's a bit confusing so maybe this will explain it better?


Folder 1 has w,x,y,z.

Folder 2 has only y and z.

If i were to drag the files of folder 1 into folder 2 i would get: w,x,y,y(1),z,z(1).

Is there a way i can drag the files in and avoid duplicates? Keep in mind i'm dealing with 14,000 songs, so simply picking and choosing is too much of a pain.

 

why don't you use something like synctoy/syncback to do this?

 

There are backup programs that do this....

But, assuming this is Vista, can't you choose the option when you copy them to skip copying all files that already exist?

Cheers...

 

You can select all and drag it to the destination folder and just hit "NO TO ALL" when you're asked if you want the file(s) to be overwritten/replaced. This way Windows will copy only the files which are missing from the destination folder(s).

Edit: Yeah, I meant what pixelot said

 

It doesn't prompt me that question, it just doubles everything without asking.

And yes, it's Vista.

 

This is really weird, Vista SHOULD ask you when at least one file/folder has EXACTLY the same name..

 

Agreed that's odd. As Goofball mentioned SyncToy from Microsoft is excellent. It's ideal (and specifically designed) for your purpose.

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/synctoybeta.aspx

I've personally only used it in XP, but the Microsoft support site says Vista is supported as well.

 

I've been using SyncBack for nearly 2 years now, without any issues whatsoever. Very user friendly and lots of options to customize for various scenario'. Customization or setting up profiles is very easy too. Use it both on XP and Vista.

 

vista should ask and not double the files.

else, www.allwaysync.com is another option.

 

That's weird. You should get something like this:



And when you select 'Yes' you should get this:



And you can choose 'Don't copy' and check the 'Do this for the next __ conflicts' option.

So you don't get that?

 

I use Karen's Replicator to snyc/back up my Data. Works great

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

 

Syncback is your answer. I use it for 44GB of songs and counting and have to back up once a week and it gives me a report after that. After the initial backup, the add ons after that take a mere few seconds and you can have the syncback make a report of the transfer so you can know it happened and keep up with that.