Binary mode

Overview

Binary mode has specialist ways of comparing the raw content of files, for cases where Same content is too strict. It works on any type of file, but doesn’t understand file formats - for images, music, video and documents the targeted modes (Image, Audio, Video and Text) will usually give better results.

Choose one of these matching types:

Similar content

Match files by similar raw content. Set the minimum similarity as a percentage (50% to 99%).

• Running a scan with this option can be much slower than Same content, especially with lots of files.
• As this is a binary comparison it doesn’t take the file format into account, so it may not produce useful results on some file types, especially compressed files.

Include identical copies - Also group files that are exact copies of each other. Untick to find only files that differ.

Truncated copies

Match files that are the start of a larger file, such as interrupted downloads or incomplete copies. A file cut short to under 1 KB is not found.

Include identical copies - Also group files that are exact copies of each other. Untick to find only truncated copies.

Same content, ignoring the start and end

Match files that are identical apart from a header or trailer, such as embedded tags or a timestamp. Set how many bytes to ignore at the First (start) and Last (end) of each file. Files no bigger than the bytes ignored are left out of the scan.

For example, setting Last to 128 bytes will match MP3 files that are identical apart from an old style ID3v1 tag at the end.

Same content in a byte range

Match files on one part of their content only - for instance the first few MB, or a block at a known position. Set the range From one byte position to another. Files that end before the range does are left out of the scan.