.\" Copyright (c) 2005\-2006 Szabolcs Szakacsits.
.\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
.\"
.TH NTFSCMP 8 "April 2006" "ntfs-3g @VERSION@"
.SH NAME
ntfscmp \- compare two NTFS filesystems and tell the differences
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ntfscmp
[\fIOPTIONS\fR]
.I DEVICE1
.I DEVICE2
.br
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.B ntfscmp
program makes a comparison between two NTFS filesystems from all aspects and 
reports all variances it finds.
The filesystems can be on block devices or images files. Ntfscmp can be used
for volume verification however its primary purpose was to be an efficient
development tool, used to quickly locate, identify and check the correctness
of the metadata changes made to NTFS. 

If one is interested only in the NTFS metadata changes then it could be useful
to compare the metadata images created by 
using the --metadata option of
.BR ntfsclone (8)
to eliminate the usually uninteresting timestamp changes.

The terse output of
.B ntfscmp
is intentional because the provided information is enough in each case
to determine the exact differences. This can be achieved, for instance,
if one compares the verbose outputs of
.BR ntfsinfo (8)
for each reported inodes by the 
.BR diff (1)
utility.
.SH OPTIONS
Below is a summary of the options that
.B ntfscmp
accepts.
.TP
\fB\-P\fR, \fB\-\-no\-progress\-bar\fR
Don't show progress bars.
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
More informational output.
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Display help and exit.
.SH EXIT CODES
The exit code is 0 on success, non\-zero otherwise.
.SH KNOWN ISSUES
No problem is known. If you would find otherwise then please send
your report to the development team:
.nh
ntfs\-3g\-devel@lists.sf.net
.hy
.SH AUTHOR
.B ntfscmp
was written by Szabolcs Szakacsits.
It was ported to ntfs-3g by Erik Larsson.
.SH AVAILABILITY
.B ntfscmp
is part of the
.B ntfs-3g
package and is available from:
.br
.nh
http://www.tuxera.com/community/
.hy
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR ntfsinfo (8),
.BR ntfscat (8),
.BR diff (1),
.BR ntfsclone (8),
.BR ntfsprogs (8)