checksum

point-and-click MD5, SHA1 and BLAKE2 hashing for Windows..


verify data the easy way

The world's fastest hashing application, just got faster!

Welcome to checksum, a blisteringly fast, no-nonsense file hashing application for Windows, a program that generates and verifies BLAKE2, SHA1 and MD5 hashes; aka. "MD5 Sums", or "digital fingerprints"; of a file, a folder, or recursively, even through an entire disk or volume, does it extremely quickly, intelligently, and without fuss. Many people strongly believe it to be the best hashing utility on planet Earth.

Did I say fast? Not only mind-blowing hashing speeds (way faster than even the fastest SSD) but the quickest "get stuff done" time. With checksum you point and click and files, folders, even complete hard drives get hashed. Or verified. Simple. checksum just gets on with the job. Click-and-Go..

Available for 64 bit or 32 bit Windows (a basic Linux/UNIX/BSD version is also included).

Why?

In the decade before checksum, I must have installed and uninstalled dozens, perhaps hundreds of Windows MD5 hashing utilities, and overwhelmingly they leave me muttering "brain-dead POS!" under my breath, or words to that effect, or not under my breath. I always knew that data verification should be simple, even easy, but it invariably ended up a chore.

Either the brain-dead programs don't know how to recurse, or don't even pretend to, or they give the MD5 hash files daft, generic names, or they can't handle long file names, or foreign file names, or multiple files, or they run in MS DOS, or choke on UTF-8, or are painfully slow, or insist on presenting me with a complex interface, or don't have any decent hashing algorithms, or don't know how to synchronize new files with old, or have no shell integration or any combination of these things; and I would usually end up shouting "FFS! JUST DO IT!!!".

No more!  Now I have checksum, and it suffers from none of these problems; as well as adding quite a few tricks of its own..

What is it for, exactly?

Peace of mind! BLAKE2, SHA1 and MD5 hashes are used to verify that a file or group of files has not changed. Simple as that. This is useful, even crucial, in all kinds of situations where data integrity is important.

For instance, these days, it's not uncommon to find MD5 hashes (and less rarely now, SHA1 hashes) published alongside downloads, even Windows downloads. This hash, when used, ensures that the file you downloaded is exactly the same file the author uploaded, and hasn't been tampered with in any way, Trojan added, etc.; even the slightest change in the data produces a wildly different hash.

A file hash is also the best way to ensure your 3D Printed propeller blade hasn't been "redesigned" to self-destruct!

checksum on my Windows desktop, hashing like crazy..

It's also useful if you want to compare files and folders/directories; using checksums is far more accurate than simply comparing file sizes, dates or any other property. For quick file compare tasks, there's also checksum's little brother; simple checksum, simply drag & drop Two files for an instant hash-accurate comparison.

peace of mind for your optical data media, with hashing

If you burn a lot of data to CD or DVD, you can use checksum to accurately verify the integrity of your data right after a burn, and at any time in the future. If you distribute data in any way, maybe torrenteering your favourite things, run a file server of some kind, or just email a few files to your friends; hashes enable the person at the other end to be absolutely sure that the file arrived perfectly, 100% intact.

As well as providing secure verification against tampering, virus infection, file (and backup file) corruption, transfer errors and more, digital fingerprints can serve as an "early warning" of possible media failures, be they optical or magnetic. It was a hash failure that recently alerted me to a failing batch of DVD-R disks; I saved my fading data in time, and got a refund on the disks. I'll leave you to consider the million other uses. There's only one reason, though; peace of mind.

Absolutely no-nonsense file verification..

checksum can create (two clicks, or a drag-and-drop) or verify (one click) hashes of a file, a folder, even a whole disk full of files and folders in one simple, no-nonsense, high-performance operation. Basically, you point it at a file or folder and go! The parameters are controlled by command-line switches, but most folk won't have to worry about that; it all happens invisibly, and is built-in to your Windows® Explorer context (aka "concept", aka "right-click") commands (see above).

Note: while checksum operates with command-line switches, it is NOT a Windows® console application; there's no messy DOS box, or anything like that. But if you want to run it from a console, that's covered, too.

There are a wealth of command-line options, but most people find that checksum just works exactly as they would expect, without any messing about; right-click and go! But, if you are the sort who likes to customize and hack at things, you will find plenty to keep you occupied!

On-the-fly configuration..

If you want to change any of checksum's options on-the-fly, simply hold down the SHIFT key when you select its Explorer context menu item, and checksum will pop up a dialog for you to tweak the process. If you want to have anything permanently set, checksum comes with standard plain text Windows ini file for you to tweak to your heart's content. Anyone smart enough to use MD5sums, can edit plain text.

windows checksum creation options dialog

The options dialog is most useful when you want to only hash certain files in a folder, like mp3's, or movies. With your file mask groups, you can configure file-type specific hashing with just a couple of clicks.

checksum creation options dialog, file types group drop-down, regular Windows masks applyCommon music, video, and archive formats come setup and ready to go, and you can easily edit or add to these at any time.

You pop up the options by holding down the SHIFT key when you select the explorer menu item, so it's easy to get to the advanced options whenever you need them. Same goes for verification, though generally you won't need it - checksum is smart enough to just get on with the job, verifying whatever checksum files it finds in the path, be they MD5, SHA1 or BLAKE2, or all of the above, and you'll probably never need to use anything but the default verify command, no matter how advanced you are! And because checksum recognizes other formats of MD5 and SHA1 files (there is no standard BLAKE2 format), it can be used not only to verify and create new checksums, but also verify existing checksum files, even ancient ones, automatically.

I expect there is some weird MD5 file format out there that I don't have an example of, Wang, maybe? but in practice, checksum supports ALL known MD5 verification file formats, that is, known by me. If you find an MD5 file format that checksum doesn't support, send me that file!!

There isn't really a standard SHA1 format yet, but checksum's is pretty good (it's the same as the output from a *NIX sha1sum command in binary mode). Shall we?

windows checksum verfication options dialog

100% Portable..

checksum usually operates as a regular installed desktop application with Explorer context menus, custom .hash, .md5, .sha1 and .blake2 desktop icons, Windows start menu entries, and so on; but checksum can also operate in a completely portable state, and happily works from a pen-drive, DVD, or wherever you happen to be; no less than total portability.

Even with its little brother, simple checksum tagging along, the whole lot fits easily on the smallest pen-drive (the 32 bit version will UPX onto a floppy disk!), enabling you to create BLAKE2, SHA1 and MD5 hashes, wherever you are. To activate portable mode, simply drop a checksum.ini file next to checksum.exe (or run one-time with the "portable" switch), you're done.

It's no problem to run checksum both ways simultaneously, or to run checksum in portable mode on a desktop where checksum is already installed. Simply put, if there's a checksum.ini next to it, checksum will use it, and if there isn't an ini there, checksum uses the one in your user data folder (aka. "Application Data", aka. "AppData").

If you like applications to run in a portable state, even on your own desktop, no problem; you can skip the installer altogether and simply copy the files (checksum.exe and simple checksum.exe) to wherever you like. They are in the installer's files/ directory inside the main zip archive. There's also a checksum.ini inside the archive, so you can unzip-and-go.

Note: Regardless of whether you install checksum or run it in a portable state, its functionality is identical.

Introducing.. The Unified Hash Extension™
And Multi-Hashing™..

checksum uses the MD5, SHA1 and BLAKE2 hashing algorithms, and can create .md5 and .sha1 and .blake2 (or .b2 or whatever you use) files to contain these hashes. But checksum prefers to instead create a single .hash extension for all your hash files, whatever algorithm you use. Welcome to the unified .hash extension..

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I feel there are quite enough file extensions to deal with, and with some effort on the part of software developers, this may catch on. I hope it does, anyway, and that you agree. A single, unified hash extension looks like the way forward, to me. All comments welcome, below.

As well as being able to verify MD5, SHA1 and BLAKE2 hashes, even mixed up in the same file, checksum can also create such a file, if you so desire. At any rate, if you start using BLAKE2 or SHA1 hashes some day, you can keep your old MD5 hashes handy, inside your .hash files..

The single, unified hash extension gives us not only the freedom to effortlessly upgrade algorithms at any time, without having to handle yet-another-file-type, but also the ability to easily store output from multiple hashing algorithms inside a single .hash file. Welcome to multi-hashing, which will doubtless have security benefits, to boot (a multi-hash is simply collision-proof).

Lightning fast..

checksum hashing progress fair zipping along

If you do a lot of hashing, you will know that it's an intensive process, and relatively slow. Well, checksum is fast, lightning fast.

Even on my old desktop (a lowly 1.3GHz, where checksum was initially developed) it would rip through a 100MB file in under one second. The latest checksum can crunch data faster than any hard drive or even SSD can supply it. Hashing your average album or TV episode is instantaneous.

With right-click convenience, intelligent recursion and synchronization, full automization, and crazy-fast hashing speeds, digital fingerprinting is no longer a chore, it's a joy!

Okay, I'm getting carried away, but seriously, this is how hashing was always meant to be.

Features..

If you like lists, and who doesn't, here's a list of checksum's "features", as compared to your average md5 utility..

True point-and-click hash creation and verification..

No-brainer hash creation and verification. In a word; simple.

Choice of MD5, SHA1 or BLAKE2 hashing algorithms..

Create a regular MD5sum (128-bit), or further increase security by using the SHA1 algorithm (160-bit). For the ultimate in security, you can create BLAKE2 hashes (technically, BLAKE2s-256, which kicks the SHA family's butt in both security AND hashing speed). checksum recognizes and works with all these formats, even mixed up in the same file.

hash single files, or folders/directories full of files.. no problem..

checksum can create hash files for individual files or folders full of files, and importantly, automatically recognizes both kinds during verification, verifying every kind of checksum file it can find. Also, when creating individual hash files, checksum is smart enough to skip any that already exist.

Effortless recursion (point at a folder/directory or volume and GO!) ..

Not only fully automatic creation and verification of files, and folders full of files, but hash all the files and folders inside, and all the folders inside them, and so on, and so on, through an entire volume, if you desire..  one click! ... Drive hashing is now officially EASY!

LONG PATH support..

All checksum's internal file operations use UNC-style long paths, so can easily create and verify hashes for files with paths of up to 32,767 characters in length. Goodbye MAX_PATH!

Full UNICODE file name support..

checksum can work with file names in ANY language, even the tricky ones like Russian, Arabic, Greek, Japanese, Belarusian and Urdu. checksum can also handle those special characters and symbols that lurk inside many fonts. In short, if you can use it as a Windows file or folder name, checksum can hash it!

"root", folder or individual file hashes, your call..

Some people prefer hashes of folders, some prefer "root" hashes (with an entire volume's hashes in a single file). Some people like individual hashes of every single file. I like all three, depending on the situation, and checksum has always been able to do it all.

Email notifications..

checksum can mail you when it detects errors in your files; especially handy for scheduled tasks running while you are away or otherwise engaged. checksum's Mail-On-Fail can do CC, BCC, SSL, single and multiple file attachments (including attaching your generated log file), mail priority and more.

Multiple user-defined file mask groups..

For instance, hash only audio files, or only movies, whatever you like, available from a handy drop-down menu. All your favourite file types can be stored in custom groups for easy-peezy file-type-specific hashing. e.g..

The most common groups are already provided, and it's trivial to create your own. You can also enter custom masks directly into the one-shot options, e.g. report*.pdf, to hash all the reports in a folder, create ad-hoc groups, or whatever.

Automatic music playlist creation..

Another killer feature; checksum can create music playlist files along with your checksums! When creating a folder hash, if checksum encounters any of the music files you have specified in your preferences; mp3's, ogg files, wma, whatever; it can create a playlist for the collection (i.e.. the album). Rather nifty, and a perfect addition to the custom command in the tips and tricks section.

As well as regular Windows standard .m3u/m3u8 playlist files (Winamp, etc.), checksum also supports .pls (shoutcast/icecast) playlists.

Effortlessly handles all known** legacy md5 files..

If you discover an MD5sum that checksum doesn't support, Send Me That FILE!

Create lowercase or UPPERCASE checksums at will..

Like many things, this can also be set permanently, if you so wish.

Automatic synchronization of old and new files..

Automatically add new hashes to existing checksum files.

That's right! Automatically add new hashes to existing checksum files!

Integrated Windows® Explorer context (right-click) operation..

The installer will setup Windows® Explorer context commands for all files and folders, so you can right-click anything and create or verify checksums at will. Very handy. "setup", the rather clever installer, is also available in its own right, as a free, and 100% ini-driven installer engine for your own goodies. Stuffed with features, easy to use, and definitely deserving a page to itself. Soon.

As explained above, you can also bypass the installer altogether, and simply unzip-and-go, for 100% portable checksumming. Or you can have both.

Scheduler Wizard..

One of checksum's special startup tasks is a Scheduler Wizard, which will guide you simply through the process of creating a checksum scheduled command in Windows Task Scheduler.

Click a few buttons, set your preferences in the familiar one-shot options dialog, and go!

No-fuss intelligent checksum verification..

Cut and paste your own checksum files if you like, rename them, mix and match legacy MD5 formats in a single file, even throw in a few SHA1 or BLAKE2 hashes just for fun; worry not; checksum will work it out!

Permanently ignore any file types..

Obviously we don't want checksums files of checksum files, for starters, but if you have other file types you'd like on a permanent ignore, desktop.ini files, thumbs.db, whatever; it's easy to setup. The most common annoying file types already are.

Ignored folders..

As well as a set of permanently ignored folders (like "System Volume Information", $RECYCLER, and so on) you can set custom ignore masks on a per-job basis, using standard Windows file masks, e.g. "foo*" or "?bar".

Real-time tool-tip style dynamic progress update..

Drag it around the screen - it snaps to the edges, and stays there (checksum also remembers its dialog screen positions, for intuitive, fast operation).

Tool-tip progress can be disabled altogether, if you wish.

Right-click the Tooltip for extra options.

During verification, any failures can be seen real-time in a system tray tool-tip, hover your mouse over the tray icon for details. checksum also flashes the progress tooltip red momentarily, and (optionally) beeps your PC speaker, to let you know of any hash failures. If there were errors, the final tooltip is red (by default). Anything to make life a bit easier.

Verify a mix of multiple (and nested) MD5, SHA1 and BLAKE2 checksum files with a single command..

Does what it says on the can!

Extensionless checksum files..

Traditionally, individual checksum files are named filename.ext.md5. Personally, I find this inelegant, and prefer them to be named filename.md5. I like it so much, I made it the default, but you can change that, if you like. When running extensionless; if checksum encounters multiple files with same name, it simply adds them to the same checksum file, so checksums for foo.txt, foo.htm, and foo.jpg would all go inside foo.md5, or better yet, foo.hash. Highly groovy.

On the verify side of things, checksum has always verified every possible checksum it can find, so these multi-hash file look just like regular folder hash files, and verify perfectly, so long as the data hasn't changed, of course!

Search & Verify Single Files..

With checksum, you can verify a single file, anywhere in your system, from anywhere in your system, regardless of where its associated .hash file is in the file tree, be it in a folder or root (aggregate) hash.

checksum will search up the tree, first looking for matching individual .hash files, and then folder hashes, all the way up to the root of the volume until it finds one containing a hash for your file, at which point it will verify that one hash and return the result. Another fantastic time-saver!

This works best as an explorer context menu command (supplied).

Smart checksum file naming, with dynamic @tokens..

checksum file names reflect the actual files or folders checked! Automatically.

If you want more, you can specify either static or dynamic checksum file names, with a wide range of automagically transforming tokens. See below for details.

Report Changed/Corrupt/Missing States..

checksum can optionally store a file's modification date and time along with the checksums, like so..

#md5#info.nfo#2009.09.26@19.49:36
5deee1f6ac75961d2f5b3cfc01bdb39c *info.nfo

Thanks to the extra information, during verification checksum will report files with mismatched hashes as either "CHANGED" (they have been modified by some user/process) or "CORRUPT", where the modification time stamp is unchanged.

These will show as a different color in your HTML logs.

You can choose whether or not to report (and log) missing, changed, or corrupted files. For example, if you only want to know about CORRUPT files, but don't care about changed or missing files, you would set..

report_missing=false
report_changed=false
report_corrupt=true

As one commenter (below) pointed out, with this sort of functionality, checksum would become "the only tool against silent data corruption". I believe this goal has now been achieved.

The chosen algorithm is also stored along with this information, for possible future use (aye, more algorithms!).

Automatically remove hashes for missing files..

Stuff gets deleted, on purpose; fact of computing life. When verifying your hashes, you can have checksum remove those entries from your .hash file automatically, so you never have to think about them again!

The number of deleted hashes, if any, is posted in your final notification.

Automatically update hashes for changed files..

Files gets mindfully altered; another fact of computing life - MP3's get new ID3 tags, documents get edited, and so on. Now you can have your hashes updated, too! That's right! During verification, you can instruct checksum to automatically update (aka. "refresh") those entries (and their associated timestamps) inside your .hash file. No more editing required!

The number of updated hashes, if any, is also posted in your final notification.

Effortless hashing of read-only volumes..

checksum can create BLAKE2, SHA1 and MD5 hashes for the read-only volume, but store the checksum files elsewhere; either with relative paths inside; so you can later copy the checksum file into other copies of the volume, or absolute paths; so you can keep tabs on the originals from anywhere.

checksum currently has three different read-only fall-back strategies to choose from; use whichever most suits your needs.

Extensive logging capabilities, with intelligent log handling and dynamic log naming..

checksum always gives you the option to log failures. But you can log everything if you prefer. hashing times can be included in the logs, and proper CSS classes ensure you can tell what's-what at a glance.

Relative or absolute log file path locations can be configured in your preferences, as can the checksum log name itself; with dynamic date and time, as well as dynamic location and status tokens, so you can customize the output naming format to your exact requirements.

In other words, as well leaving it to checksum to work out automatically, or typing a regular name into your prefs, such as "checksum.log", you can use cool @tokens to insert the current..

@sec   ...   seconds value. from 00 to 59
@min   ...   minutes value. from 00 to 59
@hour   ...   hours value, in 24-hour format. from 00 to 23
@mday   ...   numeric day of month. from 01 to 31
@mon   ...   numeric month. from 01 to 12
@year   ...   four-digit year
@wday   ...   numeric day of week. from 1 to 7 which corresponds to Sunday through Saturday.
@yday   ...   numeric day of year. from 1 to 366 (or 365 if not a leap year)

There is also a special token: @item which is transformed into the name of the file or folder being checked, and @status, which automatically transforms into the current success/failure status.

You can mix these up with regular strings, like so..

log_name=[@year-@mon-@mday @ @hour.@min.@sec] checksums for @item [@status!].log

The @status strings can also be individually configured in your prefs, if you wish. Roll the whole thing up, and with the settings above, the final log name might look like..

[2007-11-11 @ 16.43.50] checksums for golden boy [100% AOK!].log

HTML logging with log append and auto log-rotation..

As well as good old plain text, checksum can output logs in lovely XHTML, with CSS used for all style and positional elements. With the ability to append new logs to old, and auto-transforming tokens, you setup automatic daily/monthly/whatever log rotation by doing no more than choosing the correct name. You can even have your logs organized by section and date, all automatically; via the free-energy from your @tokens.

Click here to see a sample of checksum's log output, amongst other things.

Exit Command..

checksum can be instructed to run a program upon job completion. It can also pass its own exit code to the program.

Total cross-platform and legacy md5 file format support..

MD5 and SHA1 hash files from UNIX, Linux, Mac and Solaris, as well as a myriad of legacy Windows and DOS MD5 formats, in fact, every hash file I've ever come across, is supported. Throw any old MD5sum at checksum, and you'll get results. And if you don't (*gasp*), Send Me That FILE!

Work with hidden checksums..

If you don't like to see those .hash files, no problem; checksum can create and verify hidden checksum files as easily as visible ones. Like most options, as well as on-the-fly configuration via the options dialog (hold down SHIFT when you launch checksum), you can set this permanently by altering checksum.ini.

To create hidden checksums (same as attrib +h), use "h" on the command-line, or choose that option from the options dialog.

Don't worry about creating music playlists with the invisible option enabled, the playlists will be perfectly visible, only the checksums get hidden! (well, someone asked! ;o)

"Quiet" operation..

Handy if you are making scheduled items, etc, and want to disable all dialogs and notifications. Simply add a 'q' (or check the box in the one-shot options).

You can also set checksum to only pop up dialogs for "long operations". Just how long constitutes a long operation, is of course, up to you. The default is 0, so you get "SUCCESS!", even if it only took a millisecond. Check your preferences for many more wee tricks like this.

"No-Lock" file reading..

checksum doesn't care is a file is in-use, it will hash it anyway! And it won't lock your files up while it's doing it. Feel free to point checksum at any folder.

Audio alerts..

Unrelated to the "quiet" option (above), checksum can thoughtfully invoke your PC speaker to notify you of any verification failures as they happen, as well as shorter double-pips on completion (if your PC supports this - many modern PCs don't). You can even specify the exact KHz value for the beeps, whatever suits you best.

You can also assign WAV files for the success and failure sounds, if you prefer. A few samples can be found here.

Drag-and-drop files, folders and drives onto checksum..

If you prefer to drag and drop things, you can keep checksum (or a shortcut to it) handy on your desktop/toolbars/SendTo menu, and drag files or folders onto it for instant checksum creation. This works for verification, too; if you drag a hash file onto checksum, its hashes are instantly verified.

Note: like regular menu activation, you can use the SHIFT key to pop-up the options dialog at launch-time. You can also drag and drop files and folders onto the one-shot options dialogs, to have their paths automatically inserted for you.

User preferences are stored in a plain text Windows® ini file..

You can look at it, edit it, back it up, script with it, and handle it. Lots of things can be tweaked and set from here, though 99.36% of people will probably find the defaults are just fine, and the one-shot option dialogs handle everything else they could ever need. But if you are a more advanced user, with special requirements, chances are checksum has a setting just for you. Click here to find out more about checksum.ini

Comprehensive set of command-line switches..

Normally with checksum, you simply click-and-go; but checksum also accepts a large number of command-line switches. If you are creating a custom front-end, modifying your explorer context menu commands, or creating a custom scheduled task or batch file, take a look at checksum's many switches. For lots more details, see here.

If you simply have some special task to perform, it can probably be achieved via the one-shot options dialog.

Shutdown when done..

If your system doesn't normally run 24/7, don't let that stop you from hashing Terabytes of data! checksum can be instructed to shutdown your PC at the end of the job.

That's a lot of features! And it's not even them all!

checksum is jam-packed with thoughtful little touches, you might even call it Artificial Intelligence! Wherever possible, if checksum can anticipate and interpret users, it will.

checksum icon

Legacy and cross-platform MD5/SHA1 file formats that checksum can handle..

If you look inside any MD5/SHA1 checksum file - it's plain text - you find all sorts of things.

Here's what a regular (MD5) checksum file looks like..

01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a *01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3

Each line begins with the MD5/SHA1 digest (hash), followed by a space, then an asterisk, then the filename. It's a clear format, flexible, relatively fool-proof ("*" is not allowed on any file system), and well supported.

Other formats I've come across..

single file single MD5/SHA1 hash types - these necessarily have the same name as the file, with ".md5" or ".sha1" extension added, and are often hand-made by system admins, or else piped from a shell md5/sha command) ..

01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a
4988ae20125db807143f84dbe09df9782c3c033a

space delimited hashes (before we figured out the clever asterisk)..

01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a 01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3
4988ae20125db807143f84dbe09df9782c3c033a 01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3

double-space delimited hashes (just silly, really)..
Believe it or not, this is the de-facto standard for md5 files, mainly because it's the output from the UNIX md5sum/sha1sum command in 'text' mode, which amazingly; is the default setting. By the way; md5sum's "-b" or "--binary" switch overrides this insanity.

01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a  01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3
4988ae20125db807143f84dbe09df9782c3c033a  01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3

TAB delimited hashes (I am assured these do exist!)..

01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a 01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3
4988ae20125db807143f84dbe09df9782c3c033a 01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3

back-to-front hashes in parenthesis - this is quite a common format around the UNIX/Solaris archives of the world (it's the output from openssl dgst command) ..

MD5(01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3)= 01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a  or..
MD5 (01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3) = 01805fe7528f0d98c595ba97b798717a  even..
SHA1(01 - Stygian Vista (radio controlled).mp3)= 4988ae20125db807143f84dbe09df9782c3c033a

checksum supports verification of all  these formats with ease, so feel free to point it at any old folder structure, Linux CD, whatever, or any .md5 or .sha1 files you have lying around, and get results.

And in case the above track names got you googled here, yes, checksum also works great in Microsoft® Vista, and Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows Server of course, even XP! ;o)

simple checksum

the GUI of simple checksum, checksum's wee brother app for drag & drop hashing

Supplied along with checksum is checksum's little brother app, "simple checksum", a supremely simple, handy, free, and highly cute drag-and-drop desktop checksumming tool utilizing checksum's ultra-fast hashing library; for all those "wee" hashing tasks..

Drop a file onto simple checksum, get an instant MD5, SHA1 or BLAKE2 hash readout.

Drop two files, and get an instant MD5, SHA1 or BLAKE2 file compare.

Drop two folders, and get a hash-perfect folder compare (using checksum as the back-end).

Drop a file onto simple checksum with a hash in your clipboard, get an instant clipboard hash compare.

And that works from your "SendTo" menu, too (select two files - SendTo simple checksum.. instant file compare; send two folder, get a hash-perfect folder compare), as well as drag and drop onto simple checksum itself, or a shortcut to simple checksum.

Packed with intuitive HotKeys and time-saving automatic settings, simple checksum is Handy Indeed!

And simple checksum is COMPLETELY FREE, as in beer. Check it out..

128px version of simple checksum's icon

download

Download and use checksum, for free..

download

checksum

click to see zip archive contents

LIVE MD5+SHA1 Multi-Hashes..
# made with checksum.. point-and-click hashing for windows (64-bit edition). # from corz.org.. http://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/ # #md5#checksum.zip#2015.07.04@01.26:25 024f061d2262d95d0864fa558fd938f9 *checksum.zip #sha1#checksum.zip#2015.07.04@01.26:25 199ef31f91c06786a05eeead114c026a67426488 *checksum.zip
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checksum x64

click to see zip archive contents

LIVE MD5+SHA1 Multi-Hashes..
# made with checksum.. point-and-click hashing for windows (64-bit edition). # from corz.org.. http://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/ # #md5#checksum_x64.zip#2015.07.04@01.26:28 72e1cac7bd2dfd4ce3cf862920350bfa *checksum_x64.zip #sha1#checksum_x64.zip#2015.07.04@01.26:28 86d8db98f96b5c8e196594667b9d324e066f4215 *checksum_x64.zip

NOTE: If your Anti-Virus software detects anything in this software, I recommend you switch to an Anti-Virus that isn't brain-dead. If you DO discover an actual virus, malware, trojan, or anything of that nature inside this software, please mail me, and I will send you a cheque for a Million Pounds, as a reward. In other words, this software is clean.

These guys agree..
(note: I've now removed checksum from most of these sites!)

the Softpedia 100% Clean logo the windows 10 download logo the mad download editor's choice logo CHECKSUM antivirus scan report at rosoftdownload.com checksum antivirus report at download3k.com CHECKSUM antivirus scan report at softoxi.com todaysoftware 100% clean award todaysoftware 5 star Excellence award 5 star award logo bluechillies 5 star award windows7download 5 star award logo checksum's TopShareware 100% CLEAN, of course. checksum's TopShareware award.. 5/5 sharewarecentral 5 star award logo top4download 5 star award logo top4download 5 star award logo download2pc 5 thumbs up award logo Shareup Networks checksum at  filefishstick Forte Downloads

(Ahh.. The beauty of PAD Files!)

License Upgrade

If you need to upgrade your ancient license to the new format (checksum v1.3+) go here.

Itstory..
aka. 'version info', aka. 'changes'..

This is usually bang-up-to-date, and will keep you informed if you are messing around with the latest beta, and let you know what's coming up next. Note: it was getting a bit long to include here in the main page, so now there's a link to the original document, instead..

You can get the latest version.nfo in a pop-up windoid, here, or via a regular link at the top of this page.

Leave a comment about checksum..

If you think you have found a bug, click here. If you want to suggest a feature, click here. For anything else, feel free to leave a comment below..


previous comments (thirty four pages)   show all comments

Dario - 01.03.13 3:27 pm

Is the function "Find a file with specific hash" supported ?


No, nor is it being considered. However, it would be trivial to use checksum for such a purpose (create a root hash then search the .hash file). ;o)



alden - 02.03.13 6:32 am

First, many thanks for the program. It's great!

It seems that the checksum is computed across NTFS file streams. I assume that this is a consequence of it is so fast - bypassing the file system. Still, it would be nice to have the option to include the streams or not (perhaps as a command-line switch), as the same file or not. For example, I have

foo.txt
foo.txt:bar

foo.txt has two streams, the default, (often called "", ":", "$DATA"). I would like to be able to create checksums as follows.

Option 1:
abcd foo.txt (includes both the default and bar streams)

Option 2:
dcba foo.txt (the default stream only)

Option 3:
dcba foo.txt (just the default stream)
aaaa foo.txt:bar (just the bar stream)

I'm not sure how much slower this would be, but it would be worth it for some of my applications.

It's not something I've ever considered supporting because frankly, aside from a few ubergeeks (and Mark Russinovich, of course) no one uses or even knows about NTFS alternate data streams.

Maybe some big potential corporate user will come along and sponsor that change. That's unlikely though, as support for streams on Windows is shaky and inconsistent. If anything, the idea that I could attach data to a file and not change its hash is much more useful.

;o)



rogw - 03.03.13 11:43 am

Hi. Installing checksum I get "Autolt Error Line -1: Error:Unknown function name". I notice that someone previously reported this and was advised to re-download. Done this - but still the same. Thanks.


rogw - 03.03.13 1:06 pm

Please ignore last message - a reboot fixed it.

Glad to hear it! The installer isn't perfect, but it does work. Thanks for posting a follow-up, few do. ;o)



Marapi - 05.03.13 7:16 am

Hi, one HUGE feature I rely very heavily on with RapidCRC is sadly (and very, very strangely) not available in checksum.

It's the ability to select multiple folders or files to be hashed.

What I normally do is select multiple non-adjacent folders or files (ctrl+click) and then right-click send-to > RapidCRC. RapidCRC launches and then proceeds to hash all the files I selected. It's dead simple and very intuitive.

Now when I do the same with checksum, there's a pop-up warning me about multiple instances of checksum thrashing my hard drive! After that checksum only works on a single entry I selected and ignores the rest! I have to manually select each item to hash and wait for it to finish before selecting another one. ONE AT A TIME. The only other option is to move all the things I want to hash into one folder, then right-click that folder > create checksums. After that I have manually move back everything to where it was along with their new hashes, which is even more tedious than hashing individual items one at a time.

RapidCRC doesn't launch multiple instances. It simply launches ONE instance with all the files and/or folders I selected and just checksums them one at a time inside a queue. It seems so natural and logical I don't understand how checksum doesn't have this function.

By the time you have finished selecting all your folders, the checksum user has hashed the entire drive and gone for a coffee. ;o)



Marapi - 05.03.13 4:29 pm

I can't fathom why you would assume it takes me so long to select multiple folders.
I wouldn't waste my time manually selecting tens or hundreds of folders if that's what you're imagining I'm doing. Think 15 items MAX. Usually it's just 2. TWO folders. That's it. The problem is, if I decide to hash those TWO folders with checksum, I end up wasting a lot of time. This is because the folders I work with aren't usually very small. Think 20-60 GB EACH. It may be only two folders but already they can total more than 40-100 GB.

Normally I would just select those two folders, right-click, send to RapidCRC, then walk away. When I come back, it's done. Simple.

But with checksum I can't just walk away. I have to wait for it to hash ALL 60 GB in one folder, then have it start on the OTHER 60 GB folder, and THEN I can walk away. BTW, those TWO folders reside on a 2TB drive almost completely filled with lots of large files mixed with thousands of tiny files, and it's one of many drives I manage.

You're telling me the only other options I have are:

a: Just hash the entire drive. ALL 2000 GB instead of just the two 60 GB folders. BTW I have in fact hashed 2TB worth of data before, and it takes HOURS. Checksum (or any program) can't magically hash faster than a hard drive can read.

b: Put the two folders I want to hash into another folder, and then hash that folder.
Then move the two folders back to where they were and delete the temporary folder. Like I said before, this gets old very quickly especially when you have to do this multiple times a week.

I can avoid having to move folders and files back and forth by using an extremely nifty program called "Virtual Disk" (virtualdisk.net) which is unlike anything I've ever seen before or since. Basically, it allows me to add folders or files from anywhere and they'll appear inside the virtual disk as if they were physically there, but the folders haven't actually moved. It's essentially NTFS junction points on steroids. This allows me to select multiple folders and files even from different physical drives, and have checksum hash them all in one go. While this is a neat workaround for checksum's limitation of only being able to hash one partition at a time, it is far from ideal for smaller tasks that need to be done on a regular basis.

This also applies to verifying hashes. Sometimes I just want to verify TWO large files or folders, not the entire drive, which again, takes a lot of time.

All I'm asking for is essentially an "enqueue" function, and I can finally drop RapidCRC for all my non-CRC32 hashing tasks. If you're telling me it is infeasible to implement such a simple function in checksum, then I ALMOST regret donating those $7 for a checksum license.

I hear what you are saying, and I have heard it before once or twice. I guess not enough people have asked for this for me to consider it seriously. checksum has so many ways to synchronize and ignore folders and be scripted that I expect many users wishing to do such things on a regular basis have a shortcut for that.

I do understand the convenience of selecting multiple folders for hashing though it's been years since I considered doing it myself, stuff that gets hashed tends to live together these days.

I didn't say it was infeasible, in fact, I told you nothing! But I can also assure you it is no "simple function". You are spawning multiple processes with Explorer - checksum (the first instance) must track all those processes and queue their command lines into a batch of some sort before killing them all for the task itself, and that's assuming Explorer has indeed launched them all, yet. Or else have them all running feeding their commands into a central queue. I could certainly look into it, in fact I've thought of a couple of unusual approaches as I've been typing this, but there's currently a freeze on new functions so that I can get the current beta released before Summer!

In the meantime, if it's something you do a lot, with the same folders, it's simple enough to whip up a wee batch file to handle the job, or else check out this.

If you need a hand with any of this, get in touch!

;o)



Marapi - 06.03.13 2:31 am

Thank you for pointing out hashDROP. It solved my problem perfectly, and it uses the same ini as checksum which is very convenient.

I mistakenly assumed queuing multiple files was simple since it seemed that way with programs like RapidCRC and foobar2000. There's even a method in basic javascript for opening multiple entries in web browsers so it seemed trivial to implement a similar function to handle local directory paths. I was thinking something along the lines of recording the file and folder paths to an internal list and then just going through it one at a time. But it seems hashDROP already does exactly this, so I understand how there's no need to do work that's already been done. I'm only curious as to what hashDROP does that can't be easily done within checksum. Is it doing what you described and just opening and closing instances of checksum automatically?

It's to do with how explorer handles things. If you drag and drop or send a file to a program by some other means (context menu, SendTo, etc.) the command line looks like this..

c:\path\to\program.exe "d:\path\to\some.file"

This is trivial to deal with, internally. Things get decidedly trickier when you send multiple files. If you did that via drag and drop, the command line might look like this..

c:\path\to\program.exe "d:\path\to\some.file" "d:\path\to\some.file2" "d:\path\to\some.file3"

Which is also fairly easy to deal with, internally. However, if you did the same thing via a context (right-click) Explorer menu. The command line looks like this..

c:\path\to\program.exe "d:\path\to\some.file"

and this..

c:\path\to\program.exe "d:\path\to\some.file2"

and this..

c:\path\to\program.exe "d:\path\to\some.file3"

In other words, Explorer launches three separate processes, one for each file.

So now we need some kind of built-in mechanism to track completely separate instances of the same program running on the system (checksum already has this capability) and then some way of passing the data (file name and command-line switches) from the other instances back to the first instance of the running program, queue those commands, and then kill the other instances so only the first remains to; once it it certain no more data is coming; complete all the tasks.

While not trivial, it's certainly doable. I've just never had a burning need to do it. I did quickly play around with an idea after your last post, which worked quite well, so it may appear in checksum sooner than expected!

By the way, afaik, foobar2000 was unable to do this until fairly recently, much to the annoyance of its users - in a media player, this sort of capability is definitely expected.

;o)



Richard - 12.04.13 3:45 pm

Is there a console application nestled in your program?

It seems your program is too good for my needs. I'm comparing files on different computers. And running hash tools over the network is ugly in the extreme. So I've written a clever perl script to write a customized batch file, copy the hash utility over to that remote directory, and run it locally. The concept is great, except I haven't found a utility that doesn't need installing, is console based, won't crash, and in fciv's case won't try to remember past work.


Although not a "console app", checksum is in large part designed to be run from a console, or batch script, task scheduler, etc., with a vast selection of command-line switches at your disposal..

https://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/checksum-tricks.php#custom-command-line-switches

checksum can run in a completely portable state too, so long as there is a checksum.ini locally, checksum will use it. No installation required.

And if you are running checksum from a command prompt or some remote launching mechanism, checksum even has a special switch ("q") to suppress all dialogs on the local machine. Add to that fully customizable local logging and it looks like you are good to go. smiley for :D

Need anything else?

;o)



Shane Saunders - 20.04.13 12:14 pm

I have been sent to hash SH1 but I have know idea hoe to open them ,,reply to them or even read them,, I would love some help on what to do please.. I know how to save keys to GPA 0.9.1 svn1024 and encrypt a message and send i but that's about as far as my knowledge goes.. Here is what iv been sent and hopefully you can help me open them and teach me to do it myself..

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBsJRPSJMAAoJENSgSmxCqWM3/DQIAKFO2oesfQZxinoxrQ7WS+xb
qiV0I5I2xcCJEFPC+33n072KYcUS4vrrXQSTlTNhvxnAxA0cNlWJdxqGtbw//hsZ
gRwuJ1/D7pf67aHnxY4iKo/NHm3DxIxnNggsAyhlke6ux/33n5xXL+qGPLRRJyMi
cq2dv36yRVWteq3n7Wn/THxWm++PJnncsrB5yzUe6nZpgT3Co/a00vlnZoLQVYFB
nNrxL3aButWpp+EqUnjz+fNyJ9epIfNzgCX61Z7uUuBleXyfHrZRcN3AcRtkeces
19sdys7mlPSzvoKNfkQTpoZjcVkMy27MUXtttnKPpMrXMbdSr7ohLi+2ciCr9cU=
=RcAm
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Look forward to your reply Thanks Shabe


This isn't a checksum file. This is a SHA1 "Signature". It enables you to verify; much like checksum does with files; the identity of the sender.

You don't have to do anything with this SHA1 hash. If you like, you can install gnupg, maybe the Thunderbird OpenPGP plugin and, once this individual's key has been verified and added to your keyring, use the above hash to verify a sender is who they say they are. I'm assuming by "sent", you mean email.

You can also use these signatures to import a person's public key from a public key server (there are many) and, assuming that information is okay, download, install and use their published public key to send them encrypted messages which only they can read. There may be other things you can do with them!

But again, nothing to do with checksum.

;o)



Marapi - 25.04.13 11:41 am

Hi, checksum seems to ignore files and folders with certain characters like: ★
(There are others but I can't remember them right now.)

You must have missed this when reading the recent changes!

Also, checksum errors out when trying to checksum folders with names longer than 100 characters? 101 or more characters results in an error and unhelpful fallback behavior.

If file name length is the problem I wish checksum would've just said so, though 100 characters is a bit low for a limit. Even the old win32 api has a limit of 255 characters, or 249 or whatever, but way higher than 100.

Nope, it's whatever MAX_PATH is on your system, usually 260 characters, even on the newest Windows systems. Your issue must be something else.

;o)



Marapi - 25.04.13 3:14 pm

Can I download the beta?

I tried here: https://corz.org/engine?download=menu&section=beta%2Fwindows%2Fchecksum

At the time of this writing, there's nothing there.

Only registered users have access to unreleased betas. At the time of writing, it should be out within a couple of weeks. ;o)



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