Needless to say , comparing two Windows folders with similar content is something that should not be done by hand but must be done using an automatic program. The comparison operation between two folders is done when, for example, you have files of the same type in two different places on the computer or if you keep an external hard disk or a backup partition. You can use a USB stick or an online space to have the files always available of which you intend to make an exact backup copy in another folder on your computer.
Two folders with similar or equal contents can be synchronized so that they are always the same with the same files or they can be merged into one, unifying them so that of the possible files present twice, only the most recent version remains.
Certainly for the latter purpose, the Windows 7 file moving system can also work, with options to move but keep both files or move and delete the duplicate.
The problem is that Windows does not discriminate between the newest and oldest and does not understand that two files with the same name may be different instead.
1) To compare two folders you can then use a famous free program, open source, for Windows and in Italian, called WinMerge which aims to eliminate duplicates and merge the folders into one .
WinMerge works very well and is used not only to compare folders to find the files present twice, but also to compare text documents between them to find differences.
For folders it offers different blending options to unify the two folders into one, following parameters defined when moving files to the final folder.
WinMerge is quite powerful and not random because it recognizes the same files in the two folders even if they have the same name.
Winmerge is able to identify the contents of the files and verify, if two are the same, which one is the most recent, which is very useful for comparing differences between text documents written with Word, with Office programs and so on.
2) In addition to WinMerge, another excellent cross-platform opensource program, for Linux and also for Windows, is Kdiff3, a program capable of comparing directories, folders, files and texts .
Those who are not satisfied with WinMerge can therefore try KDiff3.
3) Folder Merger is a perfect tool for putting files in various folders together in one folder.
For example, you can move your MP3 music collection from your PC to your smartphone or portable media player, without carrying folders.
In addition, it can also prove useful for a backup of multiple files scattered across various directories all in one folder.
4) Checksum Compare instead compares the files in two folders to see the differences, the files present on one side and not on the other and vice versa.
If instead you need a program that compares two folders not to merge them into one but to keep them synchronized and therefore always with the same files, then you can use MOBZSync .
Synchronizing two folders means that if you add, modify or delete a file from one of the two folders, it will also be added, modified or deleted in the other.
A good program to make comparisons between folders and paths (also to restore files from backups), is MOBZSync which not only compares the data saved in two different folders, but also serves to synchronize the differences and copy the data present in a folder on the other.
This tool for Windows is very simple, just launch the application, specify the paths of the source folder and the destination folder.
By pressing the Compare button, you can see the comparison between the two folders and MOBZSync also looks at the modification and creation dates of the files, recognizing the most recent.
All file attributes are in the toolbar with the relative buttons to sort the list of files according to the various parameters.
Among other options, there are options to copy files from left to right and vice versa or to synchronize the two folders.
By clicking on Sync, a window opens where you can specify the synchronization options where to set the parameters and where to see a preview of the synchronization operations.
Among the options you can choose to ignore the files modified by the process, delete the older versions of the same file and more.
In addition to MobZync, FreeFileSync, one of the programs to synchronize files and folders between computers, is very useful, functional and more powerful.
FreeFileSync is very easy to use and allows you to compare and synchronize folders on a computer or between various PCs on the network.
DA do not forget then Microsoft's SyncToy that works well and of which I wrote a guide to set up an automatic synchronization between two folders.
