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can somebody give me a hint how this works with larger data:

using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream()) { ser.Serialize(ms, files); filesBytes = ms.ToArray(); }

files is an array of a custom type which includes information about files

ser is a binary formatter

These objects should be serialized

public class FileEntry { public string FileName { get; set; } public string RelativePath { get; set; } public byte[] Content { get; set; } }
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  • What do you mean exactly? Commented May 16, 2016 at 17:39
  • When I try to run this code an out of memory exception occurs Commented May 16, 2016 at 17:40
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    How large is the data that you are writing to the stream? Are you working with a 32 or 64 bit process? Commented May 16, 2016 at 17:41
  • Can you show the types that is/are serialized? And what are you going to do with those filesBytes Commented May 16, 2016 at 17:42
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    MemoryStream is "safe" to use for large files. However, you will be loading the entire file into memory, and it will remain there until Garbage Collection determines it a good time to recycle that memory. more msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733742(v=vs.110).aspx Commented May 16, 2016 at 17:44

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It allocates memory for at least twice the total size of the serialized data.

Once for the memory stream and second time for the new buffer that it need to allocate for ToArray()

You can use ms.GetBuffer() to get the internal buffer, but remember that it's most likely larger than the actual data. So you need to use it in conjunction with ms.Length

If the total size is very large it's better to use a file stream and return Stream instead of byte[] from your method.

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Given that he's serializing an array of objects that already have file-contents in a byte[], his code will at least triple the memory load. Definitely needs to refactor to work with the underlying streams.