Best freeware for synchronizing & backing up folders??

Deepwell

I've been making periodic back-ups of all my important folders and files onto a large external HDD. However a lot of them are media files and quite large and now its time to purge duplicates to free up space. Problem is figuring out which files are real duplicates rather than revisions of the same file name. In some cases I have also changed the folders structures as I revised how i wanted to organise them. There is too many to review manually. I have used duplicate file finder apps but they tend to identify so many matches its impractical to go through manually.

I'd like an app that could compare folders (and sub-folders) and provide a list of the common (duplicate) files and also unique files in each folder to make it easier to identify which folders can be simply deleted. Anyone got any recommendations?

Any suggestions for some freeware folder sync s/w that would help avoid this problem in the future?

TrimLad

I haven't tried any of the available freeware but I use Vice Versa Pro which cost $60.00 for the last 2 years. It was well worth the price as it makes it very easy for me to sync my laptop & PC as I do my work on both computers, I also use it to back up to an external hard drive.

johnmd

I have used second copy in the past,fairly decent,cheap as well.
just google it.
They have a 30 day trial

treefour

Syncback SE Link about halfway down the page.
Cobain

What type of external drive? You could use cygwin/rsync on some WD Mybook models which would be the most efficient method.

php-fox

Try dropbox.com

marco_polo

Synctoy is not a bad little free utility either, it will automatically delete folders on the target drive that that no longer on the source drive etc.