Data comparison tool

Basically, the partitions from one of my HD 'disappeared' some time ago - almost like they were deleted. I could not find a tool to 'un-partition', so I settled with recovering the data using 'GetDataBack for NTFS'. The tool worked pretty well, except that it found two possible ways to recover (perhaps starting from a different sector). Since I wasn't sure which method was 'correct', I decided to do both. This ate 320GB off my 750GB drive, and I think it's about time I claimed 160GB back by deciding which copy to keep. The problem is, I can't tell the difference between the two copies. Randomly checking if certain files are corrupted is ineffective and time consuming.

Hence I was wondering if there is a tool out there that'd scan the two copies (each in their respective directory) and highlight the files that are different between one and another.

Cheers.

the fc command'll do that for you:
Compares two files or sets of files and displays the differences between
them


FC [/A] [/C] [/L] [/LBn] [/N] [/OFF[LINE]] [/T] [/U] [/W] [/nnnn]
[drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2
FC /B [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2

/A Displays only first and last lines for each set of differences.
/B Performs a binary comparison.
/C Disregards the case of letters.
/L Compares files as ASCII text.
/LBn Sets the maximum consecutive mismatches to the specified
number of lines.
/N Displays the line numbers on an ASCII comparison.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/T Does not expand tabs to spaces.
/U Compare files as UNICODE text files.
/W Compresses white space (tabs and spaces) for comparison.
/nnnn Specifies the number of consecutive lines that must match
after a mismatch.
[drive1:][path1]filename1
Specifies the first file or set of files to compare.
[drive2:][path2]filename2
Specifies the second file or set of files to compare.

You can output to a text file by adding > <textfilename>.txt

I would use Beyond Compare for that. It will recursively compare directories, and show you the differences. You can get it to show just the differeing files, so you can see which if any files are different. It can look at just the filesize, or look at the contents as well. If you have allready zipped up the two recovered sets of files, it can look inside those zips, and use the CRC of each to quickly tell which files are different.

Compareing 320Mb of data will take a long time, so I would leave it to run overnight. It has never got stuck on huge data sets for me.

You can Download a demo version that will do everything you need

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chrestomanci

I would use Beyond Compare for that. It will recursively compare directories, and show you the differences. You can get it to show just the differeing files, so you can see which if any files are different. It can look at just the filesize, or look at the contents as well. If you have allready zipped up the two recovered sets of files, it can look inside those zips, and use the CRC of each to quickly tell which files are different.

Compareing 320Mb of data will take a long time, so I would leave it to run overnight. It has never got stuck on huge data sets for me.

You can Download a demo version that will do everything you need

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I sure you meant 320GB :) Will take no more than 2 hours to scan source disk, then 2 hours to verify second disk

If you are working with photos and other large files rather than documents then I would recommend using QuickSFV (free).

If my memory serves QuickSFV can scan recursively.

Make a MD5 file from disk1, then check on disk2