Error: System out of memory! bad allocation

Posts: 6 · mooseifert 16 Dec 2009, 01:03

The current version (32bit version) ends the compare process with the error
message 'System out of memory! bad allocation' every time. freefilesync uses
about 17mb ram at that point and there is easily more available. Files to
sync: 47000 in 6 folder pairs.

The x64 version does not have this error.

Posts: 7210 · Zenju 16 Dec 2009, 08:27

This message is shown when a request for memory has failed. I can only think
of two reasons for this:

1. Not enough memory available
2. Too much memory requested

I have not (yet) heard of any other complaints in this regard and tested
successfully scanning of up to 500.000 files. So is there something special
about your usecase and under which circumstances and at what point does it
happen?

Posts: 6 · mooseifert 16 Dec 2009, 09:28

On the computer in question, 3.5 gb of memory are available and about 2.5 gb
free. The error message appears directly after 'comparing' and before or
during the file list creation. Version 3.1 and all others before didn't show
this problem on the same mashine.

Posts: 7210 · Zenju 16 Dec 2009, 11:20

Does it only happen with multiple folder pairs and is it dependent from the
number of files? Is it reproducible, i.e. does it always happen or sometimes?

Posts: 6 · mooseifert 17 Dec 2009, 13:33

Well, it used to always happen but after i returned to 3.1 and now to test and
respond back again to 3.2, non of my computers show this issue anymore. I
didn't even restart them in the meantime.

Posts: 7210 · Zenju 17 Dec 2009, 14:23

There weren't any significant changes in the comparison algorithm lately, so
it would have surprised me if there were an issue with v3.2 that is not with
v3.1. Thanks for reporting this anyway, as I try to make the software as
perfect as possible.

Posts: 1 · kleinerx 13 Jul 2010, 15:08

Hello,

I get the error "Bad Allocation" too.
I have to compare round about 6.000.000 files in a large folder tree
structure.
In my Computer there are built in 2,5 GB RAM.
I'm using portable version 3.8 (32bit) with WinXP.

What can I do to avoid this error?

Posts: 7210 · Zenju 13 Jul 2010, 16:33

>What can I do to avoid this error?
Split down the comparison into multiple smaller ones that compare a subset of
all folders that need syncing.

For a rough discussion about expected memory usage, see here: [404, Invalid URL: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2927120&group_id=234430&atid=1093080]

Posts: 1 · bindlestiff 13 Oct 2010, 01:01

I had this problem on a 64 bit Windows 7 machine with FFS installed as the 64
bit version. I uninstalled it and reinstalled as 32 bit version and the 'out
of memory' problem seems to have gone away.

Posts: 7210 · Zenju 13 Oct 2010, 16:21

The issue with out of memory on x64 build is a different story related to
loading incompatible binary data, like a locking file created with 32 bit
build:
[404, Invalid URL: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=1093080&aid=3084668&group_id=234430]