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My main drive on laptop keeps filling up so I take a backup on a USB and delete the original files. But then I find myself getting (downloading or getting from someone else) files that I already have backed-up but couldn't recall at the moment.

So is there a way I can keep a 0-byte file with the same name as teh backed-up copy so that when I'm asked whether to overwrite the existing file, I can easily choose no knowing I probably have this file already in the backup.

EDIT: better yet, replace with a shortcut(.lnk) on the external drive so I can access the files hassle free and not get any errors because of 0-byte files being accidentally opened.

somewhat solution: There's no software or utility that does this automatically I think. I'm just writing out procedure I found best to solve my issue for reference.

  • Backup the home drive (D:) onto Backup drive (E:)
  • Delete any and all files you don't want from D now that they're "back-ed up".
  • Use ShellExView to create SymbolicLinkClone of both (D:) and (E:) in separate folders "d" and "e" in (D:)

I've found that you can copy over (overwrite) the contents of the folder "d" onto "e" but not onto (D:).

  • So overwrite "e" with "d" and copy what you can from "d" to (D:).

I guess it'll be more involved than this for future backups though.

This isn't reliable it seems.

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Are all the files in a single folder structure? – Paul Mar 25 '12 at 21:49
No they're all over, and in sub-directories. – laggingreflex Mar 25 '12 at 21:54
Well if you can generate a list somehow, perhaps from the backup utility you use, then it should be straightforward – Paul Mar 25 '12 at 21:59
I can only think of manually writing a batch script or something. But it won't be that easy for me, especially dealing with new backups. – laggingreflex Mar 25 '12 at 22:11
sticking with the shortcut idea, might keep from having misteaks happen more often. Process in groups create the shorts in groups. One copy is not a backup :-) – Psycogeek Mar 25 '12 at 23:25
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