Comparing two drives

by trombadh May 24, 2008 2:06AM PDT

I have been keeping all my mp3's on an internal drive. I also have them backed up to an external drive. Over the last few years I've not been careful with new files. ALMOST all got to the internal drive, but I know some have been on the external. Now the internal is full, so I need to replace it with a bigger drive. What I want to do is make this drive the MASTER for ALL mp3's. The problem is how to accomplish this.

There might be a file called abc.mp3 in the folder named by the album title, Alphabet. THIS folder on the internal drive is located in a folder called mp3s:

D:\mp3s\Alphabet\abc.mp3

On the external it might be like this:

F:\recent mp3s\last month\Alphabet\abc.mp3

Any kind of folder comparison that I've tried won't work until I get down to the folder right above the actual mp3. With 3500 albums, this is 3500 folder names all grouped differently on the two drives. What I want to do is compare the two drives for duplicates but it must include the folder title. In other words, Alphabet\abc.mp3 is ALWAYS the same, but there could also be a folder called New_Alphabet that ALSO has an abc.mp3 (for a specific example I probably have 30 recording of the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, and all actual mp3 names could be identical. What would be different is the folder name that contains the mp3's)

So if I could even get a list of folder names excluding all above the album title, that would work also. I think I can assume that all the folders that are album titles have all the mp3's in them.

any suggestions?

Discussion is locked

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Re: comparing folders

by Kees Bakker May 24, 2008 5:02AM PDT

I'd start with dir /b /s to a text file. That's from the command prompt, as you'll understand. Then import it in Excel and use some character functions to split this in folder name and file name in several columns. That's a good basis for analysis, I think.

What comes next depends on your needs.

Kees

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comparing folders

by trombadh May 24, 2008 5:48AM PDT

Thanks for the suggestion....it just occuredto me that I might import that text file into a database using \ as the delimiter --

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comparing folders

by trombadh May 24, 2008 8:15AM PDT

I did play around with this a little.... I can get the folders into columns, but it's still 3500 comparisons just for the folder name.

But since I probably have many duplicate folder names because of duplicate album names (like "Beethoven Symphonies") I can't really delete the actual mp3 names, so I've probably got THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of comparisons.

Yesterday using Windows search, I searched for *.mp3 then sorted by album title. It took two separate windows (one for each drive) but still all comparisons had to be done by hand.

I guess this is going to be difficult and cumbersome no matter how I go about it.

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I've been following this with interest

by MarkFlax Forum moderator May 24, 2008 8:10PM PDT

But it is way over my level of expertise.

However, would something like creating a text file of your folder and file lists help?

I did a quick Google for File listing to text and got a number of articles where you can use the Windows Explorer listings to generate a text file. This was one such site which shows how to create a batch file that will dump file and directory lists to text files;
http://renegademinds.com/Default.aspx?tabid=56

Would something like that help?

Mark

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Might work

by trombadh May 24, 2008 11:04PM PDT

I'll look at this more closely later today. The only listing that will show me the actual album names is using Explorer and having album title as one of the categories. If I could get this listing to a text file, that might help....

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Dir to Text

by StreetGeek Dec 12, 2009 5:32AM PST

At the directory where your MP3 files are, why not try this from a command line:

dir *.mp3 /b/s > c:\music_1.txt

Comparing two drives

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