Sync/Copy huge folder

[leppy99]

Good evening all: I have a video folder that is quite large and I don't want to lose the files in it. I copied the folder to a separate drive but the drive is small(160GB) and will not allow me to copy the folder twice to it. I add more files to the original folder and when I go to coy/backup I end up having to delete the folder on the separate drive so the original folder with new files will fit. My question is: Is there a way of 'Syncing' the folders so only the new files are copied? Or should I use Windows Backup just for this folder? Thank you in advance.

 

[Night Hawk]

Since video files(video captures mainly) tend to chew up drive space fast I made sure I had large storage as well as large OS drives when first putting the present case together. It won't take long to fill up a small drive when you keep adding new files however.

Even with the 1tb dirves in use here the oldest files are deleted to make room for the new after so long to avoid crowding. For keeping a growing number of files for lengthy periods of time if all are the same type you would still use one main folder possibly with a few sub folders to keep the new and old separated rather then having two root folders for the same.

To keep the oldest indefinitely then you have to start looking at increasing the overall storage capacity of the secondary storage drives internal or external in order to still be able to add new files as you go along. At some point however the files will still be more then the total storage capacity where some will simply have to go or be burned to removable media in dvd form.

What periodic scheduled backups will do is simply add the new with the old files as you go along by overwriting the existing files in the same folder with the same plus add the new in at the same time. Simply copying each new file over to the folder on the other drive will see that done.

Once all the latest files are backed up there you simply start nuking the older files from the C drive to avoid running out of space fast and seeing things like the "out of memory" error when there's not enough room for the paging file to be created. But 160gb is "tiny" when considering what you are trying to back up! Even a 500gb drive can fill rather quickly.

 

[kado897]

Hi leppy99 and welcome to Seven Forums. There are third party tools that allow you to do that. I use FreeFileSync. The link is in my sig and I made a tutorial to show how to use it. There are some differences as this was a previous version. Backup With FreeFileSync - YouTube

 

[leppy99]

Thanks for the help/advice; I know I need at least one larger drive(it's in the near future 'cause I notice the prices are coming down) I checked some other forums and Google and found a program from Microsoft that does what I need it to do(SyncToy) but I will keep the FreeFileSync in mind and handy.

 

[kado897]

Fair enough leppy99. I also used SyncToy and it works well. I went to FFS because it has more options.

 

[Night Hawk]

Here I keep Acronis T.I. onhand for incremental backups when needed as well as grabbing full system images off of laptops and the old Vista case I got running again. That's a paid for program however unlike some of the freebies to choose from.

Here I keep a pair of Sata III drives(WD Black edition 1tb) for storage and split up a second OS drive(Sata II model) to presently see a 100gb root and 10gb swap for a Linux distro with the remaining space on that 1tb drive used for images from the 7 host. Eventually I get into a pair of 2tb drives however.

When talking about large folders one folder here is much larger then your 160gb weighing in at a whopping 358gb! And yet that's not even the folder where I keep video captures that presently sees about 22.4gb on the main drive and 58.6gb on one of the storage drives with more being added to it.

As you can see you will want to shop for some bargains while the prices are down in order to get into one large enough for your actual needs. If you only expect to reach about 500gb for data then a 1tb drive will work since not only does it leave all that extra space but provides room to store a full system image or two as well. Why worry about only one folder when you can back up the entire drive in one shot?!