Finding unique files between duplicates

[Life2live]

Hello, I've been struggling for a while and I still can't do it. I'm only asking for help from those who have managed to do something like this, because I didn't. I want a program to show me which are duplicates between files, then to be able to move them, and to show me which are not duplicates, so I can move those as well. For example, I have thousands of files in two folders, A and B, but many are duplicates. I would like a program that shows me a window with A and one with B of these folders and I can see in these windows which files are the same, one next to the other, not in a group or one under the other, but in windows, like columns, and to be able to move each of them to the folder I want, I say this because the programs I find duplicates usually let you move only duplicates, not those from the other folder, I want to move the duplicates from both folders, so that only the unique ones remain, which are not duplicates, and also to show only unique files to be able to move as well. And I want this program to show me which are unique and which are not duplicates. Is there such a program? Thank you!

 

[file3456]

Well, your question seems like a complex one which requires complex software with many features or the use of more than one software to massage the data and acquire the results.

Try the following:


Double Commander - dual pane file manager

Total Commander - home (Double Commander can apparently use Total Commander's plug-ins)...

FreeCommander XE - dual-panel file explorer

Saleen Folder Sync - synchronize the content of two folders

NDD - compare the content of 2 folders

FreeFileSync: Open Source File Synchronization & Backup Software

Everything.exe can manipulate data, too... especially if you know regex.

 

[Life2live]

Hello F22 Simpilot, I forgot about this forum Thanks for reply, but how can I use these software regard to my problem? Thanks

 

[ssokolow]

What you described sounds specific enough that it may or may not exist exactly... however, if you're willing to relax your requirements for how it should look a bit, it should be pretty doable.

Basically, you have to approach the problem from two different angles.

For identifying duplicate files and moving them, you want a tool focused on finding duplicate files that's flexible enough to not just list or delete them.

I'd search for lists of duplicate file finders for Windows and then check their features one by one.

If you're OK with typing out commands in cmd.exe, I'd suggest the tool I write scripts around on Linux which has a Windows build on its releases page: fclones.

It has a group subcommand which will build a text file listing groups of files with the same contents and then you can read and modify that file and feed it back into the move, remove, link, or dedupe subcommands to manipulate the duplicate files. It also has a --unique option which reverses the behaviour of the group subcommand so it'll build a list of unique files instead.

(I can confirm that fclones-0.34.0-windows-x86_64.zip works on Windows 7. Just bear in mind that it unconditionally uses UNIX line endings, so the status output in cmd.exe will look messed up and you'll need to use something like Notepad++ or SciTE instead of notepad.exe to read and edit the listing.)

If you move your duplicates out, you'd be left with your uniques but, if not, then finding unique files can also be seen as a special case of "recursive diffing". (i.e. Showing the differences between two sets of files.)

To do that with a GUI, you'd want something like WinMerge.