Comparing drives and files?

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1

Hi Everyone,

I have my /home directory on a separate partition. Every so often I copy my /home directory to a second internal hard drive as a backup. I also copy my /home directory to an external harddrive. I then delete the older files from my /home directory.

Of course, I haven’t been very organised. I have been unclear about when I last backed up, so I believe I have copied across the same files again. I believe I have the same files on my /home directory, my second internal hard drive and my external hard drive, which are also duplicated on the drives.

  1. Is it possible to run a program which compares files to see if they are the same? The files are music, video, documents and photographs.
  2. Is there a GUI program?
  3. If there is a way of doing this, does the program check the contents of the files or just the name?

Thank you very much.

Regards

2

There are a number of backup utilities around. I’ve been using ‘backintime’ (GUI utility) for several years.

3

Another that I note is popular is fwbackups. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’ve heard good things about it.

software.opensuse.org:

4

On 2013-09-11 01:36, nappy501 wrote:

> 1. Is it possible to run a program which compares files to see if they
> are the same? The files are music, video, documents and photographs.
> 2. Is there a GUI program?
> 3. If there is a way of doing this, does the program check the contents
> of the files or just the name?

Perhaps “duff”.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

5

I just checked because I hadn’t done this in a long time,

Although the common utility “diff” of course works when comparing file contents, you can also point it at folders to compare the contents of folders.

If you prefer a GUI frontend, I didn’t check but believe there have to be a good selection, maybe even utilities for the Desktop you’re using.

TSU

6

I haven’t used it myself, as my experience is with the program it was cloned from, but you may find “mc” useful.

It is a sort of hybrid thing: It is a console program that makes use of the full-screen in a GUI manner, and that you can control it with your mouse. Make sure to read its description (easy if you’re using YaST2).

7

nappy501 wrote:
> 1. Is it possible to run a program which compares files to see if they
> are the same? The files are music, video, documents and photographs.
> 2. Is there a GUI program?
> 3. If there is a way of doing this, does the program check the contents
> of the files or just the name?

I don’t know about GUI tools (I tend not to use them much) but you might
want to look at ‘hardlink’ and/or ‘faster-dupemerge’

8

Just my 2ct, with another direction of useful software for the task. I use freefilesync to keep backups of my fotos on an external hd. It is not really backup, rather synchronizing, but meets my needs better.

software.opensuse.org:

or alternativelly synkron

software.opensuse.org: Search

or unisson, which however I have never used.

9

luckybackup is a nice one too. It allows snapshots, profiles etc. etc. and is (like lots of others) based on rsync.

10

You could try Krusader, a KDE replacement for Dolphin, which features GUI file comparison and synchronisation.

11

Annoyingly, synchronisation has been removed from Krusader.