Balderstrom wrote:That's all the "!=" sign means, files have a different time stamp, not that they are different content-wise.
SyncTool, Compare:
[x] Ignore Date
[x] Compare by Content,
Those files are NOT equal, !=
Why? You are
IGNORING the date, thus SyncTool is telling you they are different so YOU can decide what to do with them. If you allow date comparison the Arrows miraculously appear.
It wouldn't matter what content the
same named file has, once you Ignore Date, the only result you can get is "!=" or "==". The only --> or <-- results you will get are for missing files on either side.
This is expected behaviour, TC can't guess which file you intend to keep when you wont let it make a decision based on Date.
As noted, it would be better if we had:
Compare by Content- [x] If date is different
- [x] If size is different
If neither checked, then it will always compare by content. And would give the end user control.
I second this. I am using DC to compare hundreds of folders, On the left I have my master folder of photos, on the right I have another backup folder which "might" contain different/additional files. The files on the right all have screwed dates from when the files were copied (it updated the modification time). So now when I compare the folders in DC using "ignore date" and "by contents" it gives no useful indication of files that actually differ by content (rather than date). So it's basically useless for this task unless I first go and manually do a left > right sync of all the modification dates using some other program, which is doubling the amount of work I need to do.
I was going to post a screen shot for clarification but apparently your anti-spam policy wont let me. You can look it up here: imgur slash KZEgzPw.jpg
(Moderator:
http://i.imgur.com/KZEgzPw.jpg)
Note "Picture 079.jpg" on the right is a zero byte file. I need some sort of indication that the contents are different. I personally don't think the output I am getting is intuitive, considering the options I have checked to "ignore date" and "by contents". I would expect the screen to show all the content-identical files to display as == and Picture 079 to be highlighted (as well as the orphan file on the right).
I've taken the time to write this post as I am literally a first time user, and I love the program, but the results I got were simply illogical. Though I understand your rationale, I doubt most new users would.
