REALLY Organizing those Giant Black Hole Hard Drives

[ahhaa]

I've been 'cleaning house' on a number of older machines, and backing up all the important files on an external Maxtor USB drive. On each machine, or plug-in to a machine, every file on the Maxtor drive is indexed afresh, which can take several minutes of wait time.
I'd like to reorganize all of it- ditch the duplicate files, burn the important stuff, and briefcase folder the stuff that changes frequently.

But mostly, I'd like to avoid the indexing wait if possible- is there a way to partition or something that is also compatible with file organizing utilities? I need more coffee to figure this out...

oh yeah, and there's the issue of the transfer stopping because 'there is a file with the same name', or 'filename too long'; I've discovered that this can cause 'innocent' other files in the folder to be skipped entirely.
It also means you have to sit and watch the paint drying.

[neomaine]

Instead of making straight backup copies, why not zip or rar them to single files. No dup or long filename issues, and, compressed.

[SLK001]

Turn off the indexing on the machine to be backed up. Just go to the control panel, admin tools, services and stop the indexing service.

About the only benefit of indexing is that it speeds up searches. The downside is that it really slows down your system.

[lordsmurf]

oh yeah, and there's the issue of the transfer stopping because 'there is a file with the same name', or 'filename too long'; I've discovered that this can cause 'innocent' other files in the folder to be skipped entirely.
It also means you have to sit and watch the paint drying.

Use Ycopy.
Freeware: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/showthread.php/use-ycopy-skip-2617.html

Problem solved.

[SLK001]

If you don't have an account at Digital FAQs, you can download ycopy here: http://download.cnet.com/Ycopy/3000-2248_4-10494064.html

[TreeTops]

Couldn't determine if Ycopy would work on win7 64. Do you know if it does?

[ahhaa]

Thanks much guys- just FYI, that YCOPY is only 'rated' from w98 up to XP, I'm downloading it now, but have Vista & w7 machines to do, as well as (forgot'em!) a bunch of various flash drives...
still haven't found a fast dup file finder either.