G+_Brad Bauer Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Hey Know-How-ers: Long time listener / supporter of the Twit network... I know we're all excited about our drones (Syma, learner here) but, I have a more traditional IT question maybe some of you can answer: I have a medium sized collection of hard drives laying about...upgraded, external, etc. They all have slightly different (or vastly different) data on them. This motley crew is rapidly aging and I don't want to lose any of the data. Is there a piece of software or method (other than manual) that you could recommend for consolidating all the data from these drives onto a single drive, while de-duping? I popped into my local independent "fix your computer" shop yesterday to ask the owner about such and he said there is nothing he's aware of to solve my problem and recommended creating folders on a large external drive for each of these random hard disks laying about. (shrug) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 oooh, I like this post. I know of none. But I think a huge NAS then de-dupe. Or catalog each drive, then create a sync strategy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Brad Bauer Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 essentially what my local computer fixer said, catalog + future sync, which sounds like an inordinately large project, going through 5 drives and attempting to de-dupe the contents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 If its only 5 drives, maybe 5 usb to SATA/IDE adapters, and de-dupe across them all at once. Then copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 The storage part is easy: I'm all about a NAS with some sort of disaster-proof backup. (Either the cloud or something like an ioSafe) the de-duping part is tricky. Get too aggressive, and you could be losing valuable information. Don't get aggressive enough and it will be pain to sort through your data, which is functionally the same as losing valuable information. You COULD use the solution in our "Cloud Storage Backup" in episode 108, but you need to answer a few questions for yourself: 1. Can I trust that the "file date" will ALWAYS be the way to tell if one file is newer than another? 2. Am I OK with losing data as long as the automated tool can shave hours/days (weeks?) off the de-dupe time? 3. Do I know the storage hierarchy I want to use? Everything from file names/conventions to folder structure and locations. -- You don't want to start this project and then need to redo your work halfway through. This is a VERY worthwhile project... you're right to put some forethought into before diving in. Peace, Padre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Brad Bauer Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Thanks for the food for thought Padre, I'm going to mull over those items this weekend and hopefully come out with an approach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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