Variation of "diff -qr" to compare file sizes/dates between file tree?

I created a CD volume that backs up some of my laptop. After some
time has past, I'd like to check what files need freshening up i.e.
what files on the laptop either have no counterpart on the CD, or
which have changed from its counterpart on the CD. I am running
Cygwin on Windows 2000, so I have access to unix-like (gnu) commands.
I've typically run "diff -qr" to find differences between the file
hierarchies on the CD and the hard drive. However, this does a
bit-by-bit compare, which is way more intensive than what I'm looking
for, and takes way too long. I want to check only the size and date
of nondirectory files. Basically emulate a human being looking at a
directory listing. Sometimes, the permissions on the CD differ from
that on HD, but I'm not worried about that.

I was using "find * -ls" or "find * | xargs ls -ld" for each file
tree, then use vimdiff to look for the differences. Before looking,
however, I use "sed" to remove the details that don't relate to file
size or date. This works poorly because of discrepancies in the
alphabetic sorting. On the hard drive, A-Z precedes a-z, while the
sorting of CD files seem to be case insensitive. It also seems to
cause the CD drive to thrash quite a bit, though it might simply be
due to the short amount of time spent on each file. Finally, the
directories on the CD are dated according to the time that it burned,
though that can be solved by having "find" return only
nondirectories. It doesn't solve the other problems, though.

I tried "ls -lR", but the output is not diff-friendly. Each file
does not have the full path, and there are too many places for
diff to get confused e.g. lots of blank lines, directory totals,
and the filenames are preceded by the numeric sizes. I'm sure
that with enough filtering, some of the problems can be removed,
but it doesn't look like a pretty way to do it.

Is there a more straightforward way to make this comparison? I'm
resorting to "diff -qr" for the time being.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [ACPI] Call for help: list of machines with working S3
    ... but a diff of what? ... BlueZ patch -mh4 ... this laptop works very well! ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Gnome keyring password prompt on login
    ... I do recall that I had some issue a short while back on the laptop that it somehow stuffed the keyring it had been using, and either wouldn't unlock it or kept complaining that there wasn't a default. ... I'll also play with having the password the same as my login, although I think I'd rather it were diff.; I wasn't worried about having to type the password when logging into the laptop, more that I *wasn't* having to on one and was on the other. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: LF95 5.70f and integer exponentiation
    ... I have 5.70 installed on a laptop. ... a diff on the output generated the following :-( ... apologies for the line wrap. ... Prev by Date: ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)