So it's like an mmo?
Without..the O?

But yeah, useful. ;D

Sanjo

thanks newslang, Hashtab does indeed look very good

hal9000

I've been using Hashtab for quite a while. It's an extra tab in the properties window of a file and gives MD5 as well as other hashing algos.

[beeblebrox.org]

newslang

Wow.. saw this comment at the downloadsquad link and looks like a fascinating topic, QuickPar, for a future LH post:

"When I put super important information onto a CD, I use (on windows) QuickPar and make as much par files as I can. You can make up to 150% recoverability. Theoretically, if you drilled a hole through the cd and could somehow get the files unaffected by that hole to copy off, using all the parts of the .par files still there you could recover all data."

It's kinda like holographic backup! Usenet users use PAR to verify and repair mega downloads. Few links to learn more:

[www.quickpar.org.uk]
[parchive.sourceforge.net]

Tutorial/example: [www.binaries4all.com]

nerdly

bash users looking for something similar can use my md5tool.sh bash script that wraps around the md5sum gnu utils program:

[www.worldsworstsoftware.com]

I personally use the script to verify backed up and archived data integrity on a regular basis. The script creates a checksum.md5 file in the directory you specify, that checksum.md5 file has the md5 checksums for every file found below the directory you specified. Then later you can run the script with the "CHECKALL" argument to make the script find and verify every checksum.md5 file it finds.

onejasonforsale

From the website (emphasis mine): "FileCheckMD5 will automatically start testing files on startup if a FileCheckMD5 MD5 sums file is found in the same directory as the executable. ... [A]dding this automation makes it easier for less experienced end users to test their CD since now it's just a simple double-click on the FileCheckMD5.exe file instead of them having to load the checkfile into the program manually."

So this seems to be an really easy way to check your burnt media. Hex strings make me cross-eyed. ;-)

I'm going to give this a try, even though I rolled my own just like commenter "onejasonforsale" using the Windows-based open-source command line tool md5deep.

piyo

FileCheckMD5 won't notice your hidden system files. You'll have better luck with DVDsig [members.ozemail.com.au] and MD5Checker [getmd5checker.com] .

Passworm

FileCheckMD5 won't get your hidden system files. You'll have better luck with DVDsig [members.ozemail.com.au] and Md5Checker [getmd5checker.com] .

Passworm

I use a bash script in Cygwin that computes an MD5 checksum of an entire directory tree. It writes the checksum in a executable script in the root of the directory tree. This second script re-computes the tree's MD5 checksum (not including itself, of course) and compares it to the pre-recorded checksum, reporting whether there was a match or not. Now burn the directory tree to disc. Voila! Optical disc integrity checking made easy.

PLUS: It runs wherever "bash", "find", and "md5sum" are available. Take that, Microsoft Windows!

Posco Grubb