[Ormnik]

There used to be a program by Connectix called SpeedDoubler (CopyAgent). This utility had one very useful feature, it allowed smart copies. Why has there been no development of a similar product for OS X? I would think in the 6 years since OS 9 that someone would have made such a utility. If anyone knows of a product that has such functionality I would really like to know. Thanks.

[Thinine]

Describe this "smart copy" functionality.

[RevEvs]

according to what ive googled Speed Doubler provides the following

* Easily schedule fast copies of files and folders
* Hot Key shortcuts
* Copy files over your network up to 3 times faster than the Mac OS 8 Finder
* Increased 68k emulation performance

all pretty much pointless and out-dated with OS X.

I didnt see anything about "smart copies" though. care to explain what that was?

[- - e r i k - -]

No, the point is that it allowed for a choice when copying folders that already existed: Replace or Update. Update copied only new or modified files.

[CharlesS]

It supposedly was able to copy files faster than the System 7 Finder could. Whether it would still be able to copy files faster than the OS X Finder is far from certain. OS X's file copies seem to be very fast in comparison to OS 9's.

[Ormnik]

I didnt see anything about "smart copies" though. care to explain what that was?

Let's say I had 1000 files. I was copying thenm and for whatever reason 934 files got copied and the rest didn't. Now I have to copy them all again, or spend time finding what files didn't copy. They could be in multiple folders and would prove to be difficult to find which ones. So the only choice is to do the copy over. The finder would just replace the files and folders and attempt to copy all 1000 files from scratch again. But with SpeedDoubler you would have a choice to only copy those files that were new or modified from the source. So it would then only try to copy the remaining 66 files. And to be more precise it is a control panel called CopyAgent.

The actual fuctions I miss having since leaving OS 9 with CopyAgent are the Smart Copies, Syncronizing, Verifying Copies and Reporting when the copy is complete.

Here are some screenshots of the control panel.

Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

[Ormnik]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

No, the point is that it allowed for a choice when copying folders that already existed: Replace or Update. Update copied only new or modified files.

Exactly, and that is what I miss, having a choice to update. Who really wants to copy 689Mb of files everytime when only a few of the files have change since the last copy? Doesn't anyone else hate that? I just wish there was a smarter Finder copy method.

[patman600]

You could always use rsync. Not available through the finder unfortunately, but it does what you want. Wouldn't surprise me if someone has written a gui wrapper for it.

[besson3c]

Somebody has written a GUI for rsync called RsyncX, I believe, but I've always preferred using the command line myself.

There is also psync (Perl sync). Utilities like DejaVu use it.


Rsync is very slick - quite handy, and quite flexible. It would be nice if it were built into the Finder, but the problem is knowing when to update or copy the contents of a folder. When should this option be available? It doesn't make sense to make it available when the two folder contents have absolutely nothing to do with each other (not to mention confusing, and perhaps even problematic), and it is expensive to scan the destination folder each time just to get a sense of whether there are traces of the source's folder contents.

The only way I can think of doing this is to get into a version control mechanism like RCS. RCS will keep a little file that indicates the version number of the file, and allow you to log changes - sort of like how CVS works in this respect, AFAIK. If there was some sort of hash included in this file to indicate that the files at one point matched, the Finder could use this to offer you the "update" option.

At what point did SpeedDoubler make "update" available as an option?

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by Ormnik

Let's say I had 1000 files. I was copying thenm and for whatever reason 934 files got copied and the rest didn't. Now I have to copy them all again, or spend time finding what files didn't copy. They could be in multiple folders and would prove to be difficult to find which ones. So the only choice is to do the copy over. The finder would just replace the files and folders and attempt to copy all 1000 files from scratch again. But with SpeedDoubler you would have a choice to only copy those files that were new or modified from the source. So it would then only try to copy the remaining 66 files. And to be more precise it is a control panel called CopyAgent.

The actual fuctions I miss having since leaving OS 9 with CopyAgent are the Smart Copies, Syncronizing, Verifying Copies and Reporting when the copy is complete.

Here are some screenshots of the control panel.

Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

Wouldn't you just try and re-copy and when finder says "Do you want to replace X" tell it no and check apply to all?

[Millennium]

* Easily schedule fast copies of files and folders
* Hot Key shortcuts
* Copy files over your network up to 3 times faster than the Mac OS 8 Finder
* Increased 68k emulation performance

None of the techniques used by Speed Doubler really apply in OSX anymore. Multithreaded copying is already part of the OSX Finder, networking has been vastly improved, and there is no 68k emulation to speed up. That leaves hot keys, but there are plenty of programs out there that do hot key shortcuts better than Speed Doubler ever did.

[- - e r i k - -]

He was talking specifically about smart folder copying, which has been addressed in this thread.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

Wouldn't you just try and re-copy and when finder says "Do you want to replace X" tell it no and check apply to all?

Nope, since that doesn't work with nested folders (it either replaces them outright or doesn't update their contents).