Compare files >4Gb

[gmolleda]

What procedure or tool may you suggest to compare files (flat text) larger than 4Gb?

[Aaron]

Hello,

You likely would not be able to open them in the Text Compare session type, due to the files being so large. Our max test case is closer to 500 megs:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo...z=kb_maxfilev3

If you simply need to know if the files are equal or different, you could perform a binary scan. This can be done from a Folder Compare session by aligning the two files by name and running the Compare Contents command. Or selecting your two files, right click and Quick Compare while also configuring the Tools menu -> Options dialog, Startup section, "When starting with file comparison, show quick compare dialog" and set to binary scan. With this option enabled, you can also use the Windows Explorer shell extension, it will pop up this dialog first and scan your pair of files; just don't launch the compare after it returns results.

Alternatively, since your files are plain text, if you can divide them into smaller chunks less than 500 megs you could compare the chunks. Since the 500 meg max test case also depends on your system hardware, I would undercut that number by a bit, just to make sure things run a bit smoothly; perhaps 300 or 400?