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Massive data backup question: What Linux software do you folks recommend for helping sort out and organize terabytes of files and remove duplicates? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by over_clox@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I've got a whole bucket full of old hard drives, CDs and DVDs, and I'm starting the process of backing up as much as still works to a 4TB drive.

It's gonna be a long journey and lots of files, many prone to being duplicates from some of the drives.

What sorts of software do you Linux users recommend?

I'm on Linux Mint MATE, if that matters much.

Edit: One of the programs I'm accustomed to from my Windows days is FolderMatch, which is a step above simple duplicate file scanning, it scans for duplicate or semi-duplicate folders as well and breaks down individual file differences when comparing two folders.

I see I've already gotten some responses, and I thank everyone in advance. I'm on a road trip right now, I'll be checking you folks recommend software later this evening or as soon as I can anyways.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Deduping only works for a single target or context at a time, so if you're working with many drives, you'll need to sort your data into unified locations on the backup target first, THEN run dedupe tools against it all.

Second, if all of your data from these drives fits uncompressed on the target drive, rsync will be the fastest to get the data from A to B.

[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Of course.

Goal #1 is to migrate what data I can (which is a fucking lot) all over to the 4TB, in separate folders for each drive. Only after that will I worry with scanning for dupes and organizing things.

I'm just looking for advice on what software is recommend for helping deal with such large tasks in advance.

I've actually got 2X 4TB drives plus a single 2TB drive. But yeah, I know the best and easiest way is to consolidate it all on one drive first.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then rsync is your friend, like so rsync -avzp /drive1/ /target2/drive1/

That will copy all the files from drive1 to a destination folder in the backup drive called 'drive1'.

[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Joy oh joy, I got like 75+ optical discs and like 10+ hard drives (whatever still works) to back up.

This is already gonna take months I know, just my free time at the end of the day.

This is gonna be fun. /s

Thank you and everyone for the advice though.

Side note, I think one of my drives has almost all the SNES game ROMS...