My main drive on laptop keeps filling up so I take a backup on a USB and delete the original files. But then I find myself getting (downloading or getting from someone else) files that I already have backed-up but couldn't recall at the moment.

So is there a way I can keep a 0-byte file with the same name as teh backed-up copy so that when I'm asked whether to overwrite the existing file, I can easily choose no knowing I probably have this file already in the backup.

EDIT: better yet, replace with a shortcut(.lnk) on the external drive so I can access the files hassle free and not get any errors because of 0-byte files being accidentally opened.