merging files & compressing

[spazz31585]

ok, i have two questions.
first, i have copies of the same pictures in multiple locations on my computer. for what reason, i honestly don't know. but in some folders i have pictures that i don't in other folders. i'm just looking to make this a little easier
what i have been doing is copying all the files from one folder to the other, then sitting there and having to check each one for the same size and everything to see wether or not to overwrite one with the other.
now, since i have thousands of pictures and such like this, is there any way to make windows (or a program that will do this) to just overwrite the files that have the exact same file same and name, or something similar to this?
if anyone has any suggestions i would really appreciate it as this is taking an unbelieveable amount of time that i just really do not want to spend on this. but i also don't want to lose any pictures or accidently overwrite one with another one of a different size, as i have done many times. thanks

Also, i have a question about backing up all my information. i have about 35GB's worth of uncompressed, unzipped data on a hard drive i think is about to fail. i don't have enough cd's to back all of it up.
i do, however have a spare drive that holds about 28GB worth of data.
my question is, what is the best thing to do in order to make all this fit. should i compress it using windows's compression option? zip it with winzip? use winRAR? or is there another program that would help me with this project?

thanks for any and all help that you can offer

 

[computerhakk]

For your first question, I remember that question being asked a while back and I don't recall a solution, but maybe someone can find one now if there is. I did a quick google and didn't really find any. However, check to make sure that one folder is not a shortcut of another or a duplicate of the other that some of your programs may of created. Such as a program copied the files over to it's own folder for sharing or whatever case; synchronize, etc.

For your second question, .RAR would probably be better than .ZIP. However, they don't really compress enough; so, maybe for your 35gb of data, maybe it'll go down to 32-34gb. It also depends on the files themselves, if they are already compressed files such as .mp3 and what not, or if they aren't. Another method is to split the files individually in your compression utility you choose and do it that way.

 

[spazz31585]

thanks for the suggestions

and no, they are folders i had created.
i copied the folders as backups and what not. and then forgot that i did it and saved some pictures in one folder, and others in the other folder and renamed some and what-not. i pretty much created a mess

and i know that winzip has a 4GB limit on their zip files =(. do you know if RAR has that or not?

preciate it