Home › Forums › Archives › Computer Support › Computer Support Discussion › Anyone know of a good utility for comparing files on two Windows PCs?
- This topic has 10 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 18 years, 3 months ago by
Yahooligan.
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July 19, 2008 at 2:40 am #28885
Jeff Hester
KeymasterI’ve got a laptop and a desktop with a bunch of folders that contain a lot of redundant content. At one time, they were identical copies, but some files have been edited on the desktop and have since been edited on the laptop.
Just wondering if anyone had run across any neat tricks for dealing with this recently.
July 19, 2008 at 3:02 am #169931Yahooligan
MemberI haven’t had this problem myself, but a quick search on Google turned up something called FolderMatch that looks promising. It’s commercial software, but there is a trial version. Not sure if the trial has limitations tho.
July 19, 2008 at 3:05 am #169926David
ParticipantCan you map them over the network? comparing c:files with z: is easier than trying to find software to compare two computers over the network.
July 19, 2008 at 3:28 am #169922Jeff Hester
KeymasterDavid;231585 wrote:Can you map them over the network? comparing c:files with z: is easier than trying to find software to compare two computers over the network.Yes, but I’ve got about 30 subfolders with more folders nested below that. I don’t want to go through every folder and manually compare files if there is some easy way to do it.
July 19, 2008 at 4:14 am #169927David
Participant@Jeff 231586 wrote:
Yes, but I’ve got about 30 subfolders with more folders nested below that. I don’t want to go through every folder and manually compare files if there is some easy way to do it.
Yeah yeah, I’m just saying you don’t need to specifically compare folders on different computers, you just need to compare folders. 🙂
Anyway, the only thing I can think of is BeyondCompare (Beyond Compare – The file compare, folder compare and remote directory compare utility from Scooter Software), but I haven’t done too much with it, so I don’t know how well it works comparing folders.
July 19, 2008 at 5:26 am #169923Jeff Hester
KeymasterThanks for shaking the cobwebs loose, David! I’ve used Beyond Compare before, but usually I was comparing two versions of a file. It never occured to me that I could use it to compare entire directories.
Thanks!
July 25, 2008 at 7:39 pm #169929EEDOK
Memberif you’re looking to keep the content on both computers, but only want to keep the most up to date stuff, you can look into setting up an svn repository to keep track of the files. Also has the nice side effects of being a good backup system, and an undo mechanism if you accidentally save over something.
July 25, 2008 at 11:06 pm #169928David
Participant@EEDOK 231692 wrote:
if you’re looking to keep the content on both computers, but only want to keep the most up to date stuff, you can look into setting up an svn repository to keep track of the files. Also has the nice side effects of being a good backup system, and an undo mechanism if you accidentally save over something.
Although there is certainly merit to that… I think most people would be better off with Dropbox. Though Dropbox may or may not have the side effect of cross-deletion. SVN is great for backing up and version control, so it definitely wins in that aspect.
July 25, 2008 at 11:56 pm #169925detn8r
ParticipantI was just going to suggest Dropbox. It’s pretty neat and damn easy.
July 26, 2008 at 9:11 am #169930Hasan
Memberwindows fc tool compares the files and you can do a bulk compare using a batch script (For loop).
July 28, 2008 at 1:58 am #169924Jeff Hester
KeymasterThanks for all the tips. I ended up downloading the 30-day trial of BeyondCompare and it worked great!
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