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Easy question - Comparing files/folders in linux (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 14 hours ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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So I have a problem. I have WAY too many hard drives and backups from decades of computing. I just hoard everything. The issue is now I don't know what I have duplicates of and what I don't. or when I want to format an old external drive for something else, I'm not sure if I actually have a backup of it.

I just want a way to basically compare folders and see what files are missing or what are duplicates. I'm fine with CLI but I may prefer a GUI for this so I'm not deleting files by accident as easily...

I have searched around for this question but all the solutions seem way too complex for me.

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[–] 2 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I'm sure someone else has a better method, but I'd just use whatever file manager you have to consolidate everything into one folder and let the file system flag any dupes.

Have ten movie folders on a bunch of different drives? Pick the biggest one, attempt to move the next biggest one into it, ignore all dupes, repeat.

Again, though, there's probably a better way

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    This would be my solution as well but I know there must be better ways !

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago

    You could rsync everything into one pile, recursively walking through all directories. You'd need a way to smush duplicate files with different names, but also to catch the opposite case of different files with the same name.

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