NoClone 4 Progress Report

alan — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:00:00 GMT

Hi NoCloners,

It has been a long delay as NoClone 4 beta is expected to release in last month. Let me explain a bit.

Unlike previous updates from versions 1.0 to 3.2, this update will involve a big fundamental change. Here are some fundamental limitations to be elimiated in NoClone 4.

at most 300,000 files can be scanned at one single scan (out of memory error)
stack overflow error
compare files not larger than 2GB
cannot read unicode file name
compare maximun 256 same-sized files

Most of the issues can be addressed when migrating to VB.net from VB6 except first one. The basic idea to solve the first problem is to store result in disk instead of main memory. This leads to large overhead when scanning a few files. An attempt to store result in main memory for small search is need. After a little research, virtual mode datagridview will be used to load only needed result from database. I have tried to optimize the byte comparison algorithm but found that the original one is optimized. My last hope is speed up byte-by-byte comparison is to write library in VC++ and then called by .net. I don't have much experience on it so, if there is any expert in this area, please write me some code and you will be rewarded.

In conclusion, too much time on research and in order to have a beta soon, the remained parts will be migrated from original code instead of optimized one.

Alan
Author

NoClone 4

alan — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:26:00 GMT

working...