Detecting orphan files

[tomczak]

A general question.

I have two USB drives. One supposed to be a backup of the first, but over time things got mixed up etc.

Both drives contain RAW and JPG' files, which should largely overlap, but there are probably many files that are unique on either drive. I would like to catch those files, compile a library of all unique images on one drive, then properly back it up to the other to make them the same and as originally intended.

Synchronizers I know don't quite work because the folder system is different between the drives. I'm trying to find the the inverse of duplicate files with a utility called Search My Files but won't know how that works until tomorrow as it compares hashes of the files and runs for hours...

Would anyone have a better idea as to how to accomplish such a mission?

[jsachs]

Beyond Compare (Scooter Software) will compare two folders and tell you when files are the same or different. If the subfolder structures are different you will need to do one folder at a time or possibly rearrange the files so the folder structures are the same.

[tomczak]

Thanks. I tried to do it by hand, but it's pretty arduous - the folder structures are not even close and there is a lot of files, most of them duplicated - I'm just looking for a few of those that are not.

For the record, I think I accomplished the automation with Nirsoft 'Search my Files' which has a 'non-duplicate' option, which is pretty much the way I want it. There were two problems though: it ran for more than a day and, since it compares the file hashes, it found images that are not quite unique, but have unique metadata...

[tomczak]

I think I found a programme (freeware) that allows for the comparison the way I was hoping for. It seems fast and quite well designed, including a wide array of search options: http://www.alldup.de/en_download_alldup.php