mjhjmtu

I have had problems with my backup and now I have many folders several times on my HD. I have one main 'folder tree', which I want to keep as is. How can I prevent fdupes from deleting files in directories I don't want it to delete?

Is there maybe another duplicate finding utility?

Why not slow the process down and take some care

Get the comparison of duplicates from fdupes and put it in a file.

fdupes -r /path/to/start > filesToDelete

Then, at your own speed, you can remove any directories or files you want to keep from the filesToDelete

To remove entire directories

sed -i '|/directoryToKeep/|d' filesToDelete 

Work through filesToDelete in your preferred text editor and put a marker (maybe an x?) at the beginning of the copy of each file you want to keep so you can keep track of what you have done, and then, when you are sure of the changes

cat aFile | xargs -d "n" rm

rm will throw an error at each line with an x (as well as at any comment or other lines generated by fdupes) but do nothing to those files. It will, however, delete all of the unmarked valid filename entries in filesToDelete.

Is there maybe another duplicate finding utility?

Use rmlint, it does exactly what you want using the --keep-all-tagged option:

$ rmlint --types=duplicates --keep-all-tagged /path/to/dupes /other/path/to/dupes // main/folder/tree

Here's a short script to prioritize the first directiory given. It doesn't directly delete files, only prints a list for you to delete. It follows these rules:

1. Don't print any files from dir1
   


2. 
   

   If any file is not in dir1, then don't print it.

   
   
   

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   # priority_dup.sh dir1 dir2 [dir3 ...]`
   
   set1=() # List collects all matching files for a set.
   IFS=$'n'
   fdupes -r "$@" | while read i; do
    if [[ "$i" == "" ]]; then
    # Create new set, minus all files from dir1.
    set2="$(echo "$set1[*]" | grep -v "^$1/")"
    # If the sets are different, then we can print files for deletion.
    if [[ "$set1[*]" != "$set2" && "$set2" != "" ]]; then
    echo "$set2"
    echo ""
    set1=()
    fi
    else
    set1+=("$i")
    fi
   done
   

   
   
   

   Save it to a file, set the file as executable, and run try it.