Is there a way to skip duplicate files when copying?

I have a 3TB external hard drive that I use to backup large files. Usually, I just drag and drop the folders from my laptop to the external drive and Windows gives me an option to skip duplicate files AFTER it copies the new files. That has been working fine but now I am getting an error saying that there is not enough space on my hard drive and it won't let me transfer. But I just want to copy the new files and skip the duplicates. I already know there is enough space for the new files. A way to work around this is to find each new file and copy them manually, but that takes a lot of time and I don't want to do that. Is there a way to have Windows automatically skip duplicate files BEFORE the transfer starts so that it won't count the space of the duplicate files?

kyle09 said:

I have a 3TB external hard drive that I use to backup large files. Usually, I just drag and drop the folders from my laptop to the external drive and Windows gives me an option to skip duplicate files AFTER it copies the new files. That has been working fine but now I am getting an error saying that there is not enough space on my hard drive and it won't let me transfer. But I just want to copy the new files and skip the duplicates. I already know there is enough space for the new files. A way to work around this is to find each new file and copy them manually, but that takes a lot of time and I don't want to do that. Is there a way to have Windows automatically skip duplicate files BEFORE the transfer starts so that it won't count the space of the duplicate files?

Why not use an external program like FastCopy or FreeFileSync?

mike s said:

Why not use an external program like FastCopy or FreeFileSync?

I had not considered using a separate program. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

kyle09 said:

I had not considered using a separate program. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Good luck.

Another excellent one (if you strike out with the above) is Create Synchronicity.

mike s said:

Good luck.

Another excellent one (if you strike out with the above) is Create Synchronicity.

FastCopy worked for me. If anyone else has this problem, download FastCopy. Go to Options and set it to Diff HDD Mode. Then in the drop down menu select Diff (no overwrite). Then, execute.

Most backup software, even free stuff, offers incremental backups without compression. I don't overwrite older versions but presumably that can be done too if wanted.