How to match up a huge amount of files with their backup copies?

[Wie Gehts]

HI

I'm hoping theres something better than me having to crawl through a huge number of files and folders in order for me to know what I can toss off of one hd because I have another copy on another hd that I want to keep.

Everything I accumulated and want to keep, I've saved on one hd and put a backup on another drive. But now I'm trying to consolidate some things and toss other things as well as a lot of new stuff I have yet to backup so its getting mixed up.
So I have a ton of crap and I'm trying to make sure I'm not trashing anything I want by mistake. So I'm finding I have to open multiple windows of my hard drives and go through hundreds of files, one by one, to see if I have a copy on another drive so I can either find the backup copy or if its a single file that I need to make a backup of.

So is there any kind of thing where i can correlated, or match up, a large number of files on one drive in spotlight or something, to the same files on another drive instead of doing it one dam file at at time?

Thanks

 

[BlueRevolution]

Are they in the same folder structure or just all over the place?

 

[Wie Gehts]

something like this...

I might have a folder with hundreds of files that were backed up onto another hd but backed up and sorted into a bunch of folders with regards to category. Then along the way, I may have added more files into that first 'hundreds of files' folder that I need to find out....is this a file I already made a backup copy...or is a newer file that I need to make a backup copy.

If it was a matter of, say, two folders, and one folder had 200 items and the other folder had 215 items...well then I know 15 of those files are new ones that need backing up and the other 200 I backed up previously.

Then I could probably drop one pile onto another and get it to not replace my backups while providing me with a second copy of the new ones..

but it ain't that easy, I'm having to look one by on, what I have in one folder and if its backed up somewhere among multiple folders on the backup drive.

So I was hoping there was a way I could, say, select 200 files in one folder and somehow select the files in other folders and find all the matching ones which might then tell me which of those 15 'extra' files are outstanding.

Magic, right? lol

I mean, theres tons of things the OS can do that I have absolutely no idea of.

Because right now I'm having multiple folder windows open of all the items in question, viewing them in alphabetical order, and going....'aardvarks and the women who love them'....then looking in all the other folders for it.....and if I got the backup copy already, great...if not, then I make one....or trash an unnecessary third copy I might find on another drive to free up more space. And one at at time is going to take forever.

 

[Wie Gehts]

now that I slept on it, instead of trying those long winded ways to desrcribe my problem...why don't I just say the solution I'm looking for

Will spotlight (or whatever) let me select multiple items to search for at one time? There, one bloody sentence LOL