File/Folder comparison limits

[bobt100]

What is the maximum number of files/folders that I can compare at a time.

I have a few directories that contain around 5 million files.

Thanks,
Bob

[Craig]

Hi Bob,

Here's the knowledge base article on the various size limits:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/support.php?zz=kb_largefiles.php

Althought it says BC2 only, I expect the numbers should be pretty similar for BC3. In BC3 the numbers will be higher if you're running a 64-bit OS.

[bobt100]

Thanks for the reference. It seems I can't find anything that will do this for me with this number of files.....

Bob

[Michael Bulgrien]

That depends. If you have a powerful box, you should be able to do it. I have a server with 16 GB of RAM for example...it would handle a good number of files. Assuming that your folder structure contains sub-folders, then you could break the compare into several smaller jobs. Under folder compare session settings, you can turn off the "Automatically scan subfolders in background" option and make sure that the "Expand subfolders when loading session" option is disabled. Anyway, you won't really know until you try.

[Craig]

On 32-bit Windows BC is limited to 2GB, 3GB if you use the /3GB (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx) option. On 64-bit Windows it's limited to 4GB, so it doesn't matter how powerful your CPU is or how much ram you have if it runs out of address space. ;)

Michael is correct though, that you might be able to do it if you can break the comparison down by limiting it to a range of subfolders. For example, you could use ".\[a-m]*" as the "Include Folders" filter, and it would only compare folders in the root that start with 'a' through 'm'. All subfolders of those folders would be compared. Then just start a second comparison with ".\[n-z]*" to get the second half. You could use ".\[^a-z]*" to catch anything that doesn't start with a letter.

[Michael Bulgrien]

On 32-bit Windows BC is limited to 2GB, 3GB if you use the /3GB (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx) option.

Thanks Craig... I'm not familiar with the /3GB parameter. Is the 2GB limit per instance? In otherwords, on a multi-CPU machine loaded with extra RAM, could I be running several instances of BC3 on the same box simultaneously with each instance using up to 2GB RAM?

[Craig]

Yes, the limit is per-process.

There's a more layman*-friendly description of /3GB in Raymond Chen's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/08/22/218527.aspx

*Layman in this case being someone who knows what "virtual address space" means. ;)

[Michael Bulgrien]

Thanks, Craig... I've been reading up on it and just implemented the /3GB setting on one of my SQL servers that was maxing out on it's memory utilization. There are opportunities to learn something new every day... :)