best way to copy files

[Btone]

over the years ive been lazy and as ive run out of disk space ive just bought a new HD and install it along side my old one. Now i have run out of slots for new HD so i want to install a new big HD

now my old HD's are a mess, i've 30 years of cd's, photo's and videos spread over 3 HD with a LOT of duplicate files

i was wondering what is the best way to copy the files to my new HD without copying all the duplicate files

 

[Raumarik]

Personally from past experience I'd copy the lot, then remove duplicates once you have a nice fresh OS installed and everything working as you'd like.

There's plenty of duplicate file finders/removers here:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17701152


Personally I've used this one and it was surprisingly good
http://duplicatefilessearcher.net/

Make a test folder and ensure you know what you're doing first though, might take 10mins but it's best to double check prior to letting it loose on the important stuff!

 

[uv]

Also, when copying across, use an app called TeraCopy - it can do hash checks on each file to make sure everything copies acrOSS without issue, invaluable for very large file transfers

 

[adaswani]

Just get a caddy for the HDD and take the old drives out, do a fresh install and then copy the files over.