Question

I’d like to know how to compare two files to determine if it is exactly the same one.
I know how to compare filename, date of creation/modification and even hash if required.

However I don’t know how to compare meta data on the file (I actually don’t know how it is stored) : security configuration, compatibility settings, potential antivirus timestamp and so on.

my final goal is to deep compare two file systems on separate computers

thanks
steve

[edit] in order to clarify I reformulate the title of the question

Answer 1

What constitutes a file? On modern filesystem (say NTFS) you have

• file atttibutes (times, FAT attributes)
• unnamed file stream
• zero or more alternate data streams (ADS)
• Extended Attributes
• NTFS security (it’s stored in ADS yet we can identify it separately)

The rest (configuration, antivirus timestamp /what’s this/ etc) is stored outside of the file and is not the file.

So you need to check the above mentioned bits of the file and compare them.

Different methods exist for reading different bits of information and you need to use them all to get all them together and compare them for different files.