Intelligent cloning

[Macnoviz]

Hi,

I have an external hard drive with lots of media files, and now I backed this up to an identical external hard drive.

I wanted to use Carbon Copy Cloner to mirror any changes made in the original hard drive, but I have now tried this for the first time, after having moved some files around. Now instead of moving those files on the other hard drive, CCC just copied these files from the original hard drive, something that takes much longer.

Is there any program that could do this more intelligently? (moving files on the backup drive instead of copying them over from the original drive again?)

Thanks a lot!!

 

[angelwatt]

As long as you set it correctly, CCC will only copy what's different.

 

[Macnoviz]

As long as you set it correctly, CCC will only copy what's different.

yes, copy, but it doesn't notice that the data is already there, but in a different place, so if I move a 100-GB folder to a subfolder, CCC deletes it in the old location and copies it from the source disk again (which takes about half an hour, instead of seconds when you move it manualy)

 

[angelwatt]

yes, copy, but it doesn't notice that the data is already there, but in a different place, so if I move a 100-GB folder to a subfolder, CCC deletes it in the old location and copies it from the source disk again (which takes about half an hour, instead of seconds when you move it manualy)

I don't know of any program that will simply notice some has moved and not re-copy. Programs simply aren't that smart. It may seem obvious from the human perspective, but from a machine perspective this is a very difficult thing to do. It doesn't know if the moved stuff should be copied or is completely new. Programs look at things in a very black and white way. File wasn't in folder, so deletes file in destination. File has been updated, so will copy new.

 

[FourCandles]

A Subversion server will do exactly what you're after - move files on the remote system rather than delete an copy again - but that's a whole different ball game from a local backup solution.