File Rearranger

[4eert5e]

Hello,

I have a lot of files spread across many hard drives and unfortunately, they are not very well organized at all. Since I abhor unorganized file trees, I have decided to clean it up and organize it. This is where I run into my problem. Most of my disks are about 80%-ish filled with data and I don't want to have to move files a little bit at a time (ex. move 100GB from disk1 to disk2, move 100GB of other stuff from disk2 to disk1, repeat). I have planned out where I want everything and it will all fit, the problem is not enough temporary storage. I was wondering if anyone here has heard of a program that, basically, you tell it where you want stuff and works out a sequence of file transfers based off free space and such, then transfers the files. This seems like such a useful program that somebody would have thought of this before me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Carey

PS: For people recommending that I just buy some more hard drives, I've thought of that. I have around 20TB of data (I run a public file server for people in my apt) and I don't want to have to buy a ton of hard drives just to move some stuff around.

 

[not so gray matter]

I've never heard of a program like this, and I've searched quite a bit. I had a similar situation when I wanted to convert all of my HFS+ disks to NTFS. I ended up having to transfer 200GB at a time @ about 16-20MB/s. It took a while.

The only thing I can think of is setting up a batch file that copies files over to the new location in sequence. You'd basically have to tell the command prompt to copy the files, then delete the originals. Once it's done each copy it should move on the the next.

The commands you would use would be XCOPY and DEL/RMDIR. First you'd copy the files with XCOPY and add attributes that verified the files and such. Then once verified you'd delete the old files.

Here's a bit of info on command line tools.

The Windows Command Line, Batch Files, and Scripting- Using the Command Shell(DOS Prompt)

If you want more help or an example of how to use XCOPY to cut/paste let me know.

 

[whs]

Alternatively you can leave the files/folders where they are and include them into the library.

 

[4eert5e]

Ok thanks, I think what I'm going to do is attempt to code a small CLI program that will take in a config file with what files should be moved where and spit out a batch script with the necessary operations to move the files around. If anyone wants to help out with this, give me a shout

@whs: I initially tried this but since libraries don't map to a certain directory, It makes it impossible for FTP and other programs. Also, I'm a bit too anal about organization to make that a feasible option

 

[MilesAhead]

Don't know if it will suit your needs but I know the only sane way I could copy Windows.old over my Lan was using RichCopy. It might be useful to have even if not for this task:

Free Utility: RichCopy, an Advanced Alternative to RoboCopy