Checksum Control, Verify Files In Windows

File verification software can be used to verify the integrity of files. This is for instance helpful when verifying the integrity of data backups, or files on a web server to make sure that attackers did not modify them.

All programs that offer the functionality work alike. They process a list of files, create checksums for each file and save those information to a list. The verification then takes place when the program is run again on the same set of files. Files that have not been modified in the meantime have the same checksum, modified files a different one.

I have reviewed several file verification programs in the past. This includes File Verifier++ and SVF Ninja as well as HashTab a Windows Explorer shell extension and the command line tool Checksum Integrity Verifier.

Checksum Control is a portable file verifier for the Windows operating system. Its portable nature makes it ideal for verification of backups on optical discs or external storage devices. Just create a file verification table of all files that you want to backup and put that list along with the Checksum Control program in the backup location.

The actual checksum creation process is straightforward. Selevted SFV/MD-5 Create from the task list when the program starts. You can then add files or folders via drag and drop, or by selecting a root folder for the creation. The application supports a skiplist which basically is a blacklist of files that will not be included in the checksum creation process.

Checksum Creation supports two types of checksums, SFV checksum files and MD-5 checksums. The latter are better suited for file verification purposes as it uses larger checksum values.

You select a file name for the verification file in the last step and may add a comment to the file as well. This completes the creation of the file verification table.

You select the file verification option on the start page if you want to verify a previously created file verification table. The program will check all file checksums and display a report to in the end. The report window displays files with correct and wrong checksums, as well as files that have been skipped during the test.

How does it compare against previously reviewed file verification programs? File Verifier++ supports additional algorithms and has the easier to use interface and the same is true for SVF Ninja. Checksum Control is a great alternative even though it takes longer to create the file verification table thanks to the applications paged layout.

Windows users can download Checksum Control from the developer website. The application is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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SFV Ninja, Simple File Verification Software

Many download portals and websites display file checksums on their download pages. The idea behind this is to give users the chance to calculate the checksum of the downloaded file to compare it with the checksum on the website. If the values are identical, then the file has not been tampered with (unless a hacker managed to alter the checksum on the page as well).

SFV Ninja is a portable software for Windows that can be used to calculate and display checksums of files that are accessible on the system. When you first start the program you have options to load individual files or files of a folder into the application. Users who have already worked with the program before can alternatively load a single checksum file or make the application crawl a folder for multiple checksum files to re-verify the data.

You can verify all files right away with a click on the Verify all files button. You may alternatively switch from the default CRC32 mode to MD5 or Sha-1 mode if those are preferred.

It may take some time to verify all files. The program managed to test 10 to 20 files per second on my test system. Each checksum is then displayed next to the program’s name and size in the interface. The information can be saved in sfv files which can be loaded again into the software to verify that the files have not been modified in the meantime.

Information that get saved include the file name and path, size and the checksum that has been calculated. When you load the sfv file into the application, you can re-verify all files again and compare the old and new checksum of each file with each other.

This can be handy to make sure that files in a specific directory have not been modified in the meantime, or to get a list of modified files in a directory. You can for instance use it to verify all files on a USB key, in a development directory or a shared network drive.

SFV Ninja is a portable software that is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Yo can download the latest version from the developer’s website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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