Comparison software question for runtimes.

StratDragon

I need to combine 3 data folders and I'm in a quandary

BACKGROUND:
I recently updated to DS4, but with that I disassembled my boot drive from a RAID 0 to a standard two (2) 500GB SATA 3GB/s setup, one for OS and Apps the other for Content & Runtime (runtime), I copied my runtime over from the nearly full 250 SATA to the now freed up 500GB SATA but it appears when I was using DS3 I had unbeknownst to me 4 active data folders so sometimes when I load a legacy project portions of it are missing the data files and it begins to be a process of going to the log file, seeing the relative path of the data and guessing which runtime has the necessary files. pulling up the properties on each folder can be misleading because size and number of files don't necessarily mean use the data folder with the biggest file size or most file and mapping all the data files is a bad idea because I'm spanning multiple drives and not getting my data from a consolidated point.

WHAT I NEEDS:
I need a tool to combine these three runtimes into one runtime that has all the files and I looking for a tool that can do this with Windows 7 64 bit. I would ultimately like to get all the data in one "Data" folder, on one drive (so I can remove the 250 SATA from production and into a backup role). I've never used comparison or synchronization software so I don't know of a package that will do this in the way I need it done which is One Data folder with the content of all three data folders and the crap-shoot of the missing files being the ones I need.

Has anyone had any "positive" experience with this or feel like making a recommendation?

sriesch

I don't know about syncronization, however for comparison I have found ExamDiff Pro pretty handy. http://www.prestosoft.com/ps.asp?page=edp_examdiffpro . Their main page does mention "Automated directory synchronization" in the latest version, so you could research that to see if it's something that might help.

Jaderail

A Data File is just a Data file as far as I know. A DS3 data file for Some Item should be the exact same as the DS4.5 data file for the same Some Item. Now that said, this is what I did. I simply pointed my DS4.5 Directory Prefs to all 4 of my old Content folders, which I moved to one folder on my PC. I can load all my old scene files in DS4.5 unless it's a older poser item that has the broken geometry that DS4.5 does not like and DS3 would just overlook.