Slow compare

[Clark]

Hello,

We've had Beyond Compare here at work for the past few years, and it has done everything I need. One or two version updates ago, when I do a folder compare, then select a group of sub-folders, and right-click "Compare Contents", the comparison seems horribly sluggish (several minutes or more). It used to compare very fast (20-30 seconds). It seems to take inordinately long when comparing PDF files. Has anyone else noticed this? What can I do to speed up the compare (waiting for 10 minutes or longer for it to complete is awfully frustrating)?

Thanks for any advice,

[Aaron]

Hello Clark,

Did you change the type of Compare Contents scan you were previously running? Is it performing a CRC, Binary, or Rules-based scan? Is either or both sides of the compare over a network or FTP?

I don't believe we've changed much in this area of BC3, from BC 3.3.5 to BC 3.3.8, but with a bit more information we could take a look at our changelog history and see what might be effecting it. It is also possible something else has changed on your system (or over a network) which might have an impact.

[Clark]

Hello Aaron,

Thanks for the reply... I've always used Binary compare... I tried a CRC and Rules-Based compare just for good measure, and they are all slow.

Typically, from my network-connected computer, I compare 2 folders using mapped drive paths--left side is mapped to one server, the right side is mapped to another server (file system mapping).

If I filter out everything except text-based file extensions (i.e., exclude .PDF, .DOC, .JPG, etc.), then the compare goes pretty quick, but sometimes I need to verify these other file extentions. As I recall, the performance was great up until about 6 months ago, then I started noticing really long compare times.

[Aaron]

A binary compare could take awhile to download then run the binary scan. As a test, if you create local copies of these two directories (on your Desktop\), how long does the scan take? This would help narrow down if it is the network traffic that is slowing it down, or if it is the binary scan itself.