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F.A.Q.

Please read these questions and their answers first, and if they do not provide you with a suitable answer then please use the forum. Check Identical Files is abbreviated to Check Identical Files in this document.

User's questions:


Answers:

Is it safe to try Check Identical Files?

This utility does represent a danger for people who are not confident with file management. We have tried to minimise the risk by adding some degree of protection.

  • Windows folders (e.g. C:\Windows) is protected per default. These folders are skipped when scanning for duplicate images;
  • Hidden and system files are protected per default as well;
  • Once you decide to delete duplicate files, the files are placed in the recycle bin by default. You can also opt to put the files in an archive file.

Users are strongly discouraged to delete files from Windows folders or other system folders.


How does the checking mechanism work?

When you press Start, Check Identical Files will first make a list of all the files that are in the folders you specified.

The files are compared and the files that have identical length are subjected to further investigation.

These files are compared to each other by looking at them byte for byte. If they turn out to be exactly identical, they are displayed in the list.

This means that you can be sure that the files that are found are indeed a 100% exact match!

The filenames are not compared, so you can have identical files that have different filenames.


How many files can I check; is there a maximum?

In theory the maximum would be 2.000.000.000 files (2 billion). But it's depending on the amount of memory. One of our customers, the current winner (Pete Amend, San Diego CA, USA), has checked 3,080,540 files divided over 8 drives, eliminating more than 200.000 duplicates. If you have checked more, please let us know!

Check Identical Files is optimised in many areas to deal with the duplicate checking process in a smart and intelligent way. Files are never compared when there's no need, and the comparison is stopped as soon as it is clear that two files are not duplicates. This minimizes the disk access time that is neccesary in this process, and thus makes for a very fast search.


How much memory does Check Identical Files use?

The new CIF version will use more memory then the old version (2.20). This is because of avoiding performance issues. It's faster to allocate more memory at once than increasing it every time CIF needs more memory. CIF will automatically give some memory back in case another application needs more memory than is available. Under normal circumstances CIF will use about 60 Mb of memory. CIF will use more memory in case you are scanning a large number of files.


How much CPU does Check Identical Files use?

CIF does not use much CPU power, but that depends on the kind of CPU you have. This is because your hard disk will be used intensively and this is the performance bottleneck in each computer. It's recommended to have a 850MHz CPU to run CIF smoothly.


What is the .Net framework?

CIF uses the Microsoft .Net framework. This Framework is a software component that can be added to the Microsoft Windows operation system. It provides a large body of pre-coded solutions to common program requirements, and manages the execution of programs written specifically for the framework. The .NET Framework is a key Microsoft offering, and is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform.

Thus please use Windows update to check for any critical updates to the .NET framework.


Do you have an upgrade policy?

Yes, we have. Just look at the upgrade page on our website.


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