SOLVED Compare contents of folders facility?

[Greystones]

Does anyone know of a facility in W7 that can compare the contents of a folder that has been transfered over from say XP, and will report the omissions, please?

 

[Tushman]

Does anyone know of a facility in W7 that can compare the contents of a folder that has been transfered over from say XP, and will report the omissions, please?

I don't know of any such utilities in Win7 but there are some options available. First of all, you can use the dir command (DOS shell) in Win7 to output the contents of the folder as a text file. FOR EXAMPLE:
dir c:\test > "C:\directory output.txt" /b /o

The /b switch will truncate the output so that only the file names appear; the /o switch will alphabetically sort the file names in the output. Do the same for the directory on the XP computer. To compare the two text files simply copy & paste into Excel. Excel 2007 version has a built in feature that will compare the two columns & highlight the differences.

The other option is to use Robocopy which is also built into Win7. There are several advantages of using Robocopy but as it applies to your situation, robocopy will only copy files that are not on the destination folder. For example, you have on the XP computer
some filename #1
some filename #2
some filename #3

If you have already copied
some filename #1
some filename #3
onto the WIn7 computer, then Robocopy will automatically skip #1 & #3 and copy only the files that haven't been copied over yet.

This assumes that the two PCs are networked or connected somehow. If none of these options appeal to you, there are plenty of 3rd party applications out there. There's also SyncToy (made by Microsoft) - as a free download. I have no experience with this utility. More information here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

 

[Elmer BeFuddled]

I can't say of a facility built into Windows 7 but I use Beyond Compare from Scootersoft. It adds a context entry if you wish (recommended), you then just select the "comparitor"** file or folder, select the "comparisee"** file or folder and it'll (a) tell you the files or folders are the same, or (b) open a window listing the differences. You can then if you wish send the missing bits from file A to file B to make them the same. It sometimes struggles with, say, a large pair of .dll files but those in my experience are few and far between.

There's a 30 day trial but I eventually ended up buying a licence as was very handy when customising XP system files..

Oh, and it works fine on x64 systems.


**Made up words.

 

[TrainableMan]

I've downloaded it but never gave it a try but it looks promising and it's free...
http://winmerge.org/
Now also available as a portable app you can install it on a flash/pen drive ...
http://portableapps.com/news/2008-01-21_-_winmerge_portable_2.6.12

 

[etalmar]

I've downloaded it but never gave it a try but it looks promising and it's free...
http://winmerge.org/
Now also available as a portable app you can install it on a flash/pen drive ...
http://portableapps.com/news/2008-01-21_-_winmerge_portable_2.6.12

May have to try WinMerge myself. Looks like a very useful program and I like the portability factor. Always a plus. Thanks, TrainableMan.

 

[Fire cat]

I don't suppose this is at all what you want, but there's Windows's "Briefcase". You can sync files with it, seeing in the process, what files have been modified or not, what files exist or not anymore.

I often use it for synchronizing my web server files over the many computers I work on. I can edit on both computers, and it'll just merge the files (not the content, jut the actual files in the dir)

 

[Greystones]

My thanks again to all of you and especially Trainable Man for pointing me to Winmerge, which is a very good program that does exactly what I wanted & quickly, and is quite easy to use for an amateur like me! I can recommend it indeed.

Solved!

 

[TrainableMan]

I'm glad we could help.

 

[JSehgal]

On advice from Tushman, I downloaded the Microsoft SyncToy 2.1 utility an hour ago. Using it, I synchronized my entire data on to an external USB hard drive. It did it all. Then I went back to the original data and changed just one character in one of the Word files. I asked it to run again. It did and reported that it changed and overwrote one file as I would have liked it to.

Prior to using this facility, I had tried to do the backup and a couple of files went missing and I did not relish the prospect of conducting the manual process to locate the missing files. I was lucky to locate this forum and found out about SyncToy2.1. So I downloaded it and ran its Preview facility. It not only reported that there were two files giving me problems, but also as to which files these were and the likely cause of the failure. Once the cause was corrected (a program in the background using the file had to be closed), I clicked on the Run button and it ran successfully. I was surprised at the fast speed of execution.

My conclusion so far is that it will do the job for me for synchronization and backup purposes. I see no reason why SyncToy 2.1 will fail at the task of moving files from an XP system to a new one as long as proper network connection is made and folders specified correctly.

This utility is user configurable, so it pays to read the introduction and set it up for your particular application.

JS

 

[TrainableMan]

I see no reason why SyncToy 2.1 will fail at the task of moving files from an XP system to a new one as long as proper network connection is made and folders specified correctly.

synctoy is fine for copying basic data files but it may run into limitations of working on a single user basis so when migrating from XP to Windows 7 it is better to use Windows Easy Transfer (WET) because it carries over the data for ALL users as well as all the userids and their settings. And with it's advanced options can also be set to get data which is not stored under users standard folders (My documents, my pictures, etc).

So for a migration from XP to W7 use WET.

For syncing up data on two drives such as a harddrive and a usb thumb drive then use synctoy. Also realize that Synctoy is not perfect; if two drives were synced once already and then you accidentally delete a file, it checks it's old log, sees that you deleted the file and so it deletes it on the back-up too (if set to Synchronize) when a lot of times what you wanted was to restore a file you erased by mistake.

 

[Greystones]

Having previously thanked TM for his help in pointing me to Winmerge, I hesitate to comment on his latest post recommending the use of WET, but I have no doubt he is correct if you are as knowledgeable as he is. However, not being so, I got into a right mess when I used it to try and move my XP files over to my new W7 laptop, and even had to re-install W7! The problem I faced was deciding (as the amateur that I am!) what to select at the latter stage of the process when it presents you with a list of all the files in groups, most of which file names I did not recognise from deep within Windows and the registry etc. and could not do! I eventually assumed that WET must know what it is doing and so selected all, only to find later that it messed up the existing OS software on my new laptop (installed by Dell) and it locked up! After I reloaded W7 I instead used my external HDD and simply copied across My Documents and Browser settings which worked fine. I concluded that you need to be software whizkid to use WET, particularly because the W7 Knowledge base guide is just so basic and lacking in detail (especially at that stage) to make up for my inexperience! Sorry TM!

 

[TrainableMan]

The problem I faced was deciding (as the amateur that I am!) what to select at the latter stage of the process when it presents you with a list of all the files in groups, most of which file names I did not recognise from deep within Windows and the registry etc. and could not do! I eventually assumed that WET must know what it is doing and so selected all, only to find later that it messed up the existing OS software on my new laptop (installed by Dell) and it locked up!!

The WET program automatically selects the user accounts and settings. The only things you should really add in the advanced selection are folders of data that you create outside the standard My Documents, My Pictures, etc. Like for me I had come from Win98 and didn't use My anything so I needed to select C:\Data where all my documents/photos etc were stored (Since moving to W7 I have sorted all my data out to the appropriate My locations). But it is true, don't select any system or OS folders as they don't belong here, only select any data you may have in oddball folders.

If you used Synctoy and compared the WinXP OS folders to Win7 OS folders you could also do some damage so it is always important to be aware of your system and what folders are what. And unlike WET, SyncToy has no idea where system userids, settings, and My Documents/Music/etc files are stored so you need to know in even greater detail what and where folders are that need transferred. By default, W7 does try to hide the OS files and to some extent even your own data (it allows you access via libraries rather than direct access under c:\Users\userid\*.*) but these settings can be overridden so some knowledge of the basic folder structure is always recommended when tinkering and quite important when migrating data.