Hi all,
I'm updating a website and every time I get an archive of the files I need to update, I end up copying the lot over and wiping out my creation dates. It doesn't matter right now in the sense that the site isn't live, but even so I end up copying over a gig where I might only need to copy megabytes over. It can't just be done on the date, because the files in the archive all get today's date. I have been told about a tool called rsync, but I'm not sure what to do with it.
Thanks,
B
How do you determine "newer" files if you don't have valid date info?
A change in file size, perhaps? Is there something like a creation hash?
Yes, a changed size indicates that a file has been modified. However, a more reliable method would be to use a checksum column, such as zip:compcrc.
Maybe you're looking for a solution using Directory Opus, but Beyond Compare from Scooter Software will compare files in a folder with files in an archive as if it were another folder. Beyond Compare allows a lot of control over the way the files are compared.
Edit: Should have added that BC can then copy newer files, for example, from one side to the other.
I'm going from a local archive to a temp folder, then using Filezilla to copy that up to the sftp server. I see that Beyond Compare's Pro version actually has built-in sftp, so that might be the magic bullet I need. Thanks!
Beyond Compare looks like it might be the answer, but I don't feel clever enough to get it to work properly. I'll use the trial period wisely 
I'm trying to get Beyond Compare to work and it's so close, but it fails to load the site in the correct folder. It also feels quite unintuitive