Difference between backups?

September 13, 2008 3:49 AM

I have a large photo and music collection and find that sometimes I go to an folder and can't find files that were there before, and have had some problems with corruption. I have bought a new hard drive, but I want to set up a backup system which tells me what has changed before making any changes...

So now I have my new hard drive ('A'), and am about to clone the old one ('B') onto it.

What I'm imagining is that I copy all my music and photos from A to B, then once a week I run a program which tells me what has changed between A and B, and then if I approve then the program copies the changes from A to B.

What I'm particularly interested is whether any files have become corrupted (which I guess would be shown by a difference in the file size), or if any files have been deleted.

I already have a backup system (JungleDisk) but I find it a chore to sift through the backup logs in order to find out what has changed, and of course by the time its in the log JungleDisk has already copied the changes. What I'm looking for is something easy to compare, and then approve.

Thanks in advance! If I've been unclear in any part of this question, don't hesitate to ask for clarification in your replies!

posted by edbyford to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Not to subvert your actual question, but if you determine that corruption is occurring on A, you need to get rid of disk A. Disk storage is pretty cheap now, and there's no reason to limp along with a dying disk.
posted by Area Control at 6:30 AM on September 14, 2008