Slightly Different File Names

[Michael Beauchamp]

I am comparing files on my internal hard drive with an external Maxtor drive. For some of the files (~5000), the file contents are identical, but the file name differs slightly. Specifically, for MP3 files, some have the track # prepended on the internal hard drive but not the external hard drive.
e.g.
"01 Creepy.MP3 2,489,727 10/10/2001 11:49"
vs.
"Creepy.MP3 2,489,727 10/10/2001 11:49"

Vice-Versa flags them as different because of the prepended number. Is there a way to use wildcards to correct this?
Thanks!

[CoreyPlover]

I have also noticed this downside with file syncronisation utilities. It also occurs when a directory gets renamed or relocated. ViceVersa's synchronise with Archiving selected marks the old folder as deleted, copies it to the Archive location, then recopies the renamed folder to the Target.

There are two methods I have found to get around this:

1. Manual solution - Rename the directory / file to match before synchronisation

2. There is a very good third party utility that I use in conjunction with ViceVersa for exactly this problem called No Clone (http://noclone.net/). (Hope the nice people at TGRMN don't mind me recommending another product. I am in no way affiliated with any other software company, this is just my personal experience and experimentation)

No Clone is designed to find duplicate files amongst multiple targets.
It can be set to find exact duplicates based on any combination of file name, size, date/time, CRC check or you can find near duplicates based on 'fuzzy' contents. Fuzzy content is pretty good coz it marks files as duplicates if a large proportion is identical. Works great with Excel files (every time you reopen an Excel file it recalculates, changes a few internal date stamps and so the file differs ever so slightly from the original)

What I usually do is perform a replication (with or without Archiving) and then set No Clone to find duplicates, either amongst the Target directory, or amongst Target + Archiive directories. you can then tell it to, say, automatically remove all duplicates that appear in the Archive directory or old Target directory.