making 2 folders identical

I have an USB 2.0 external hard drive with LOTS of music (from my big ol' CD collection) on it that I carry to and from work. I have a similar folder on my hard drive at home. I would like them to be exactly the same. I do NOT want to have to hunt through 40 GB of mp3's to find the changes to copy, nor do I want to simply drag and drop and wait.

Is there any way to synchronize or mirror the two folders? I've tried looking up the synchronize function, but I didn't see how I could get it to apply to my situation. When I looked up "mirror" in help, I got a bunch of networking stuff. Any ideas would be appreciated!

 

You could use XXCOPY to do that but if you aren't familiar with it, it will take you some time to get up to speed. There is a help group on Yahoo for XXcopy that can answer all your questions and perhaps suggest a batch file to do the job.

If interested, search using "xxcopy group" and you'll see it.

 

Folder Synch...

You probably want to look at using the Briefcase function; this will allow you to make changes in either folder. I've been using this method to sync my laptop to my desktop for ages, but it also works on local drives.

Make sure you've got an up-to-date copy of everything in one of the folders (prob. the local disk; we can call this the Master copy), then delete the folder on the external drive.

Using Windows Explorer, browse to the directory (on the external drive) where you want to create your 'Slave' copy, and create a new briefcase (file>new>briefcase)

Now browse to your Master copy, and drag&drop the folder into the newly created briefcase on your external drive.

done.

Now, any changes made to either of the two copies can be updated by right-clicking on the briefcase folder, and selecting 'Update All'

 

And another option is comparator which I have used with good results all the way back to Win95.

The ver. 2.2 is Freeware but the later version is timed Trialware so be warned.

 

Comparator 2.2 is EXACTLY what I was looking for! Useful and FREE! Thanks much for the link!

 

You're welcome. Thanks for the feedback. I had almost forgotten that Comparator can equalize two folders since I don't use it for that purpose but the light finally came on when I was doing another function with it. I still remembered your post so the rest is history.

Best regards.