HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi,

I'm looking for a software, preferably for Windows and prefably free or cheap, to find matching folders from the presence of files with similar extensions and sizes.

I would like this software to display some correlation level between possible candidates, and possibly the contents of the two folders displayed side by side in adjacent frames.
However, I don't want the software to remove duplicates, at least not automatically.

I'm planning to synchronize the files later, with FreeFileSync, unless the software offers similar feature.

I could find here some suggestions for duplicate folders & files finders, but from some screenshots that I could see, I'm not sure if they truely do what I'm looking for : http://superuser.com/questions/8223/which-duplicate-files-and-folders-finders-exist-for-windows

Any suggestion ?

Thanks.

Practical case:

From a drive with bad sectors, I could quickly save about 95% of the folder probably and about 70% of the files
(but only ~1/3 in volume, as I copied the photos first and delayed the copy of the high-resolution photos and videos).

Then, as the drive was declining too much, I cloned it and did a data the recovery.

One of largest folder was "Photos", with subfolders named by years, months and topic.
Something like:

Code:

Photos
  |__2010
         |_2010 January
         |          |_John's Birthday
         |          |_Paris
         |_2010 February
         |_...
  |__2011

In most of these folders, are already lot of pictures.

The "Photos" folder was not found anymore by the data recovery performed after the cloning.
However, "lost subfolders" can be found with random names such as [0E34FD6].
I need to find who's who from similar files in the folders, so that I can fill up the existing structure with the additional files recovered.

AllDup looks very nice to locate duplicates and is very fast: http://alldup.de/en_index.php

To find the matching folders, I use the filter on extension and size, but not file name as it was too strict. (Maybe I missed some "relative path" option.)

I'm still discovering this software, but until now, the comparison is by done at the file level, which means lot of results.

By by comparing the paths of the matches found, I can rename the folders and reconstruct the structure, so that I will be able to synchronize it later.

This is still means a lot of manual work as there are many folders to rename.

It would be nice if this software was cabable to rename a folder by right-clicking its name in the path of search results, which is currently not the case.

Would Exif Sorter be of any help? Active@ File Recovery Pro includes File Organizer, which sorts recovered raw data based on file contents/exif.

Hi Larry,

Thanks for mentioning Exif Sorter (as well as Active@ File Recovery Pro).

However in this case, 99% of files still have their name.
Only the top names of the upper folders are lost.

When the files are all from the same month, I can often rename the folder easily.
For instance, if all photos are from march 2008, the folder's name would be

Code:

"Photos\2008\03. March 2008\"

If I could display simulaneously the content of all folders, it would be easier to find who is who.
In Windows 7, it is possible by creating a new library and populating it with the folders. In this thread, the message from user "A-Inside" on February 18, 2015 explains how to do:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 6c3?auth=1

One problem however is that it seems only possible adding the folders one by one to the library. It takes a while if you have many. When selecting several ones, the possibility to add them to the library disappears from the contextual menu.

Perhaps X-Ways or FreeCommander XE can help. They can produce a listing of all files along with path info, sorted by various file attributes. Scott Moulton has a session on X-Ways doing just this. I've used FC to do the same but it's a bit confusing, because I had to create a customer layout, but it's do-able.

ISTM that the "Photos" example could be handled with a DOS batch routine.

For example, if the "__2010" folder name has been replaced with "[cluster_number]", and if the subfolders under [cluster_number] retain their original names (eg "_2010 January"), then it should be a simple matter to create a batch routine to extract the year and rename the parent folder.

The following command line would list all the files in the folder_path and its subdirectories to a log file. Each file would be specified with its complete path.

dir folder_path /b /s > filelist.txt

The following command line lists all the drive's directories and subdirectories to a log file:

dir \ /ad /s /b > dirlist.txt

The DIR command has many options that allow you to sort the results by date and time, name, extension, etc.

Code:

C:\dir /?

Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/P] [/W] [/A[[:]attributes]]
  [/O[[:]sortorder]] [/S] [/B] [/L] [/V] [/4]

  [drive:][path][filename]
              Specifies drive, directory, and/or files to list.
              (Could be enhanced file specification or multiple filespecs.)
  /P          Pauses after each screenful of information.
  /W          Uses wide list format.
  /A          Displays files with specified attributes.
  attributes   D  Directories                R  Read-only files
               H  Hidden files               A  Files ready for archiving
               S  System files               -  Prefix meaning not
  /O          List by files in sorted order.
  sortorder    N  By name (alphabetic)       S  By size (smallest first)
               E  By extension (alphabetic)  D  By date & time (earliest first)
               G  Group directories first    -  Prefix to reverse order
               A  By Last Access Date (earliest first)
  /S          Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.
  /B          Uses bare format (no heading information or summary).
  /L          Uses lowercase.
  /V          Verbose mode.
  /4          Displays year with 4 digits (ignored if /V also given).

Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable.  Override
preset switches by prefixing any switch with - (hyphen)--for example, /-W.

I could help you if you wish to experiment with this method.

Here is a Windows batch file that can be executed from a CMD prompt:

Code:

@echo off

rem  X: is the clone drive

for /F %%i in ('dir X:\[*] /ad /b /s') do (

rem  Look for subdirectories named 2000, 2001, 2002, .... 2016

for /L %%j in (2000,1,2016) do (

   dir "%%i\" /b /ad | find "%%j"

rem  Write the rename commands to batfile.txt

   if not errorlevel 1 (
     echo ren "%%i" %%j >> batfile.txt
     goto :nexti
   )
)
:nexti
)

I haven't tested it, but it should find all directories named "[cluster_number]" and then search for subdirectories with years in their names. The year then replaces the [cluster_number]. No changes are written to the clone drive (X:). Instead the rename commands are written to batfile.txt.

If the commands in batfile.txt look OK, then this BAT file can be executed against the clone.

Thanks a lot.

@fzabkar: I totally agree that DOS batch files can do a lot and I wrote myself several in the past.
But when I'm under time pressure, I get a little lazy to explore the command line documentation and write such routines. Maybe also because with batch commands, it's easy to do big errors when you are tired and don't have the time to double-check the commands.
But you're right and I will explore this option more carefully.
Thank you for the batch file.