I am starting to use annex and feel a bit overwhelmed. I would appreciate guidance on this use case.
- Content must exist on multiple external drives only. I do not want those files in my internal HDD.
- Not all drives will have all files. Probably none will. Drives might be smaller than the full set.
- I should always have two copies of each file somewhere (and be warned if not).
- Some files already exist in some drives I intend to use annex with in this way. When setting annex in them, I had rather avoid having to transfer in files from another set up drive if those files already exist in the new drive.
- Some drives will necessarily be using FAT32.
- I will be adding new content over time.
(Another user here.)
I can't take you by the hand but all this seems like regular use of git-annex.
I was overwhelmed at the beginning, followed http://git-annex.branchable.com/walkthrough , visited a number of pages. I finally had something that worked.
In some cases you might consider, instead of moving files then using git annex add, using https://git-annex.branchable.com/git-annex-import/ with or without some of the options.
If you have specific problems, ask a more specific question.
Happy journey!
1) Check out the source repository group, which will drop files once enough numcopies are available elsewhere 2) This is pretty much why git-annex exists
3) Set numcopies to 2 and use 'git annex fsck' to find out when there aren't enough copies
4) You can use 'import' or 'reinject --known' to clean up known content outside of git-annex
5) git-annex will run on 'crippled' filesystems like FAT32. Would recommend avoiding this if possible though
6) This is presumed 
Sorry for brevity, but this should give some direction/keywords.