My current storage solution is two external hard drives that are left unplugged from my PC unless data is being actively written to/pulled from them. One of them is left plugged in (though it doesn't spin up unless it's USB'd to the computer) which I consider my primary drive, while the other is completely unplugged from everything which I consider my data backup.
Unfortunately, my current strategy for keeping said backup is that every half a year or so, I plug in both drives, delete the entirety of the backup drive, the copy/paste the entire primary drive over and let it copy overnight. I am entirely sure that this is an utterly stupid solution, but I have no idea what the next best option is for my kind of setup.
I could go into each folder and copy/paste only the new files over, but there are way too many folders for that to be a reasonable option. I could just have Windows ignore duplicate files when I copy/paste, but often I have updated files/file names for files that replace the originals, which wouldn't be deleted in that case, and I don't want to have multiple copies of the same files.
What I'm hoping for is that there's some application or in-built program that I've missed hearing about that can highlight only the files that aren't in one hard drive or the other so I can just deal with those files piecemeal. I'm not a huge fan of automated solutions, as I'd rather have intentional oversight in the event that I actually wanted to keep an old version of a file. I'm also not looking for any paid applications, since it's just personal stuff and I'm not bothered enough by my current solution to spend cash on it.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and found a decent solution?