Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Is it possible for a hard drive to show as having backed up everything without having backed up everything? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I was pretty jet lagged and not sure if X folder transferred completely to New Hard Drive. If I remember correctly, I cancelled the transfer at some point. However, now in review, New Hard Drive is reporting that the physical size of the folder is equally large as Old Hard Drive. Is it possible that New Hard Drive does NOT have everything properly backed up, but is just reporting it, or did it probably go through?

Edit: same number of folders and same number of files are reported. So the question is, are all files intact and I'm remembering something wrong, or should I delete in New Hard Drive and re-transfer?

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[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks 2 points 1 year ago

You can checksum them, might be faster than delete and retransfer. Some tools can do that for you at scale; I forget if rsync that that ability or not. Not sure what os or tools you have available, though, so ymmv.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

should I delete in New Hard Drive and re-transfer?

Sometimes this makes sense to do, but usually it's not ideal. Doesn't sound like deletion and copying again is the right choice for your situation IMO.

With a program like FreeFileSync you could simply compare the two directories and have it highlight any differences. If one file is missing it'll show you and let you sync the directories. If you're concerned about data integrity on the copied destination there is a content comparison mode that will verify both sides have identical bit perfect files or highlight any that have differences. There are other programs and tools to accomplish the same but FreeFileSync has an easy to use interface.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I'm using "Beyond Compare" and that apparently does the same-ish thing but I'll take a look at that. I'm guessing that I must be mistaken in my mind; it seems like both file sizes are the same and that the same number of folders and files are in both hard drives. So I must be remembering something incorrectly. Thank you!