(strangely, although this is a commonly recurring feature
request, I had never added a ticket for it)
from email:
The idea here is that I have lots of varied backups on different
drives from different dates on different computers and I want to
work through all the data to create a new reference volume. What
happens is that the user's volumes and backups end up getting a few
variations stored on them and I want to be able to easily find the
variants and then copy them into the reference directory.
Since my users tend to make partial backups on different days,
then they run out of space, I need to clean up computers and resync
backup volumes.
The functionality I am looking for is the ability to make the
duplicates invisible and then show all non-duplicates on the
non-reference volume. (this would be similar to your "Dupes Only"
feature) I do not need to see the files in the reference volume,
all of them can stay invisible, I need to see only the non matches
or non-duplicates on the non-reference volume.
Then I want to be able to select some or all those and copy them
into the reference volume So after a final scan where everything I
want copied is copied to the reference volume I want to make sure
that I have everything backed up so I can safely delete it or
confirm that the second backup is correct and complete.
Perhaps I should just trust the situation and use your software
to delete the files then review the remainder, but before I do that
I am looking for a non-destructive alternative that will allow me
to organize and sort things out so that I can maintain the computer
and secondary backup drives.
The idea is to have an option to, instead of showing duplicates,
show non duplicates. For that to work, we need at least one
reference folder. The biggest problem is to figure out an elegant
way to present the feature, UI-wise.