Someone who understands how backups work?

[Der_Blockbuster]

Hello, Yeah Im a noob in this.
I sometimes do backups of my Harddrives, they all have a capacity together of 4TB
Now I bought a 5 TB External HDD, and literally copy pasted everything over 1 by 1

Now, I want to have a software which checks if the file already exists and does only copy over files that arent included already.
Does this even work? because I did the "Backup" myself.

 

[Lucifer666]

A 'backup' in this case is just a simple copy/paste operation and does not require an expert.

That said, you say you already did the copying yourself, so why are you now requesting software to "only copy over files that aren't included already"?

Unless you mean you're looking for software to delete duplicates.

 

[Der_Blockbuster]

A 'backup' in this case is just a simple copy/paste operation and does not require an expert.

That said, you say you already did the copying yourself, so why are you now requesting software to "only copy over files that aren't included already"?

Unless you mean you're looking for software to delete duplicates.

I mean this backup was made a while ago, now there are new files on the harddrive (not the backup one).
Now I want to have this other files also be backuped.
I don't wanna delete 5tb just to do the whole thing again.
I can't pick every new file and copy it.
Do you now understand the problem?

 

[sarkwalvein]

All the following considering you keep the same folder structure (i.e. you didn't move folders and files around to other places)

If you use macOS it is complicated (because it likes to replace existing folders completely).
If you use Windows, just copy paste and it will ask you if you want to overwrite or skip existing files, just click skip and select apply for all.
Of course this last method will not work very well if you <modified> files, as they will also be skipped instead of overwritten.
If this is a problem, aeons ago I used to use a program called TeraCopy, it allowed you to chose "overwrite only with new files", that would solve your last problem.

Note: Last time I used TeraCopy, I think I was still on Windows XP, not sure if it is compatible with anything new or if it still even exists.

 

[Der_Blockbuster]

All the following considering you keep the same folder structure (i.e. you didn't move folders and files around to other places)

If you use macOS it is complicated (because it likes to replace existing folders completely).
If you use Windows, just copy paste and it will ask you if you want to overwrite or skip existing files, just click skip and select apply for all.
Of course this last method will not work very well if you <modified> files, as they will also be skipped instead of overwritten.
If this is a problem, aeons ago I used to use a program called TeraCopy, it allowed you to chose "overwrite only with new files", that would solve your last problem.

Note: Last time I used TeraCopy, I think I was still on Windows XP, not sure if it is compatible with anything new or if it still even exists.

The problem with the "overwrite only with new files" method is that Windows won't let this happen, because from the beggining it will tell you that there is not enough space.

I'll try teracopy I guess thank you

 

[DinohScene]

I'd say use "FreeFileSync".
Also, if you're a bit handy, you could try this.

 

[Originality]

Sounds like you basically want a delta backup (backs up only what’s changed since the last backup). Any backup software should be able to do this for you, so go with one of the two listed above.