Folder comparison utility suggestions 4

[guitarzan]

I am looking for a good (and hopefully, free) folder comparison utility. I have two folders, each being almost identical, and each holding many files and subfolders. I need to know, folder by folder, which files are different between the folders, which files exist only in folder A, and which only exist in folder B.

The only utilities I have been able to find will do binary compares, but this takes exceedingly long when working with many files (40G+).

Anyone know of anything good?

 

[kjv1611]

Not totally sure that it'll do all you are wanting, but FreeCommander lets you have more than one instance of the same folder, or else instances of different folders side by side, and it has many features - just a good all around file explorer. But you'd have to dig in to see if it'll do what you're wanting to do.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[vacunita]

Back in the DOS and up to Win98 days Norton Commander was a really good tool for that. But its been since discontinued.

You could try Total Commander. Seems to offer similar features.

http://www.ghisler.com/

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[chgwhat]

you could try beyond compare. not free but a 30 day try..

Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...

 

[linney]

This would be free and it still applies in XP.

How to Use the Windiff.exe Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;159214&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit Support Tools

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...9A-E08A-49A2-9D3A-C0519479E85A&displaylang=en

 

[guitarzan]

Thanks for all the replies so far... will try a few of these and report back my results...

 

[goombawaho]

Not free, but great program: Wmatch from PCMag utilities. I use it to compare the files in my MP3 storage folders between computers (my form of backup for the those files).

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks for that program mentino, goomb, that's definitely one I think I could use.

Here's a link to the program at pcmag's site:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1790135,00.asp

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[goombawaho]

How come I got a star if it's not free???? Wasn't expecting that, but thanks.

Yeah it rocks and shows files in different colors. It does take a while for folders on DIFFERENT PCs, but it's fast otherwise. You can toggle between what's different between folders OR what's the same.

It shows differences in dates of files, even the if the files are named the same.

 

[kjv1611]

You've asked a question like that a few times. Basically, you don't have to exactly answer the OP's specific question to a tee in order for a post to be helpful. Basically, according to tek-tips (once you click on "thank so-and-so for this valuable post!"):

You have chosen to recognize [username] for a helpful or expert post! Thanks for letting goombawaho know their post was helpful.

Hopefully that helps clear things up for you on that point.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[goombawaho]

I guess I'm used to people stipulating (hard core) that things suggested have to be free in order to be useful or appreciated.

 

[guitarzan]

For the job at hand, Linney's suggestion (WinDiff) is perfect... relatively fast, light-weight, and as a bonus, is from a Microsoft Resource Kit, so I can run it directly on my fileserver with no worries about installing software. The interface is ugly, but gives me EXACTLY what I needed (you can customize by four categories: identical files, left-only files, right-only files, and different files. And you show/hide whichever categories you want). Took about 10 minutes to blast through 16,000+ files totalling almost 40G.

Thanks for the other responses, a few of them look great as well. Big star for you, Linney.

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, I didn't even look at that program that Linney linked to (yet), but now I aim to. I do like that it's already included with Windows, as well. Always ready to learn something new!

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[guitarzan]

kjv: Just so you know, the interface has some huge shortcomings (you can't browse for folders, have to copy/paste folder names. And the output does not have resizable columns, just one big column with fixed-width font). But if you can get past that, it works nicely.

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks for the usage info, guitarzan.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Freestone]

Not free, hasn't been updated in quite a long time, doesn't work under Windows 7, but I've used it for quite awhile and it works well:

http://www.fileware.com/products.htm#FileSync