![]() ![]() My initial reaction was to point at the Seagate hard disk being used (which is six or seven years old), but after noticing the sporadic nature of these failures, it did not take long for me to suspect it was a fault with the system's memory modules. I was in the process of making backups, and as part of that I was generating checksums, and I found that these checksums were faulting. Recently, checksums enabled me to identify a memory corruption on my home server. I have since replaced SyncToy with FreeFileSync, but I still use checksums as I believe in multi-layered protection. Unfortunately, it can miss files from backups, and I did not realise this until I started using QuickSFV some time ago. In the past, I have used Microsoft SyncToy, a backup tool which is no longer maintained. Without verifying the file, small corruptions could pass through undetected. Video files in particular are quite resilient - if a corruption has occurred, the video will often play, and so you won't know whether the file is intact unless you have checksums to run against it. DVD rips), where your backup software shows a change in the file you can use the checksums to verify which file is correct. For files that do not change often, or do not change at all (e.g. It was at this point that I decided to start using QuickSFV to checksum my data. In the past, I have found that some corrupt files have made it into my backups. Detect files that are missing from backups.Detect transfer errors between storage volumes as part of the backup process.Detect bit rot, where a storage volume "decays".If I could use a more resilient file system, I would still create my own checksums, but it is even more important when using a non-resilient file system. I am primarily a Windows user, and so I almost exclusively use NTFS volumes, which are not "resilient". My backup strategy has several steps to it, but some of these involve raw files on a volume. The program will create new checksums, or verify existing checksums, as appropriate.Īs part of my backup strategy, I ensure that all files are stored alongside checksums. For this reason, if you want to hash many files, you should hash their containing folder instead.įor command-line usage, open a command prompt in the installation directory next to LiamFootHash.exe. You can store these checksums alongside your backups for convenient verification.Īs a note on the right-click entry, remember that one program instance will open for each item you have selected. You can rename the checksum file, but you must keep the. To verify the checksums, you can right-click as above, or just double-click the file. Other hashing programs require manual naming of the checksum file, and I find this becomes tedious. This name is chosen automatically, which means you can save time by not having to provide a file name, and you can keep running checksums without worrying about name collisions for the result file. Click this, and the selected file, or folder (recursively hashing all files within), will be hashed.Īs the program runs, it writes the results to a file next to whichever file or directory you selected. Liam Foot Hash in the File Explorer Context Menu.įear the command-line? Fear not, as usage is easy - right click a file, or a directory, and you will see an entry for Liam Foot Hash with a nice icon. ![]()
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