Merging Multiple Manual Backups

[Coffee]

The issue that I have is that I copy my HD to an external USB drive semi-frequently. I am now attempting to combine these backups into a Master backup of everything that I have had. I have played with DupeGuru and various other utilities and have found parts of what I want to do without actually solving the issue.

I have been trying to use “Synchronize Dirs...” as a solution – and it almost works. I thought if I could combine everything then run a duplicate finder I would be able to clean up and get my allusive Master Backup. I have run into one issue that is confusing me – I setup a simple test scenario with similar but slightly different files and dir structure and have attempted to Synchronize them. For some reason it appears to work from left to right but the unique files and dirs on the left are displaying a ‘Red X’ instead of the ‘Blue Right to Left Arrow” as expected?



I can go through and manually change each of the red x’s to blue arrows, but I think there may be a better solution. Questions:
i. Is there a way to automatically have ‘Blue Arrows’ instead of the ‘Red X’s’
ii. Do I even need to do this – I really am just looking for a combination of both Dirs, but I am nervous about checking that it is complete or confusing which one is correct. If I combine and see that both are identical then it is easy to delete the redundant one by choosing where I want to keep the final Master Backup
iii. Is there a better way to do this that I am not considering?

I am more than willing to pay for an answer, or make a donation. I have a paid license but a solution to this would save me a whole lot of time and uncertainty that I could easily screw this up.

Thank you in advance!

/Coffee[img]

[Dalai]

You get the red X only if "Asymmetric" is checked/enabled. Disable it and you will get the blue arrow again.

Regards
Dalai

[Coffee]

<Blush> Well that makes perfect sense....

Other than this - any thoughts on what I am doing here, or is there a better way to tackle the issue?

[milo1012]

any thoughts on what I am doing here, or is there a better way to tackle the issue?

Well, what exactly is the issue?
For a backup collection you normally have to live with duplicate files.
But from trying to delete duplicate files I guess you want to purge the backup dir to save space anyway?

Why not go to the base backup dir, hit Alt+F7, select the "find duplicate" options in the advanced tab, and start the search.
Now feed the results to listbox and press numpad+, to mark all duplicate files with detailed options, and delete them.
After that you can simply copy all backup dirs one by one into a new one (a chronological order doesn't matter), as there shouldn't be any duplicate files left that could hinder.

Alternatively try saving all files into an archive with deduplication support, like Zpaq.
You could use my Zpaq plug-in for that.
Either add all files at once, or each backup dir individually, to still get a versioning although you didn't start an archive with it.