Nowadays it's very necessary to calculate the MD5/SHA1 hash of a file which is downloaded from the internet, then you should verify the signature to make sure it has not been tampered with, or else malicious software may be installed in your system. Today I’ll bring you a MD5/SHA1 hash generator, which is portable and, of course, it’s free.
HashMyFiles is a small freeware utility that could calculate the MD5 and SHA1 hashes of one or several files for us.You can drag one or more files from the explorer window to HashMyFiles, when you drag a folder into HashMyFiles, it will list all the files in the folder and calculate MD5/SHA1 hashes of them.
Then you could copy the MD5/SHA1 value via the right mouse popup menu or a shortcut key. HashMyFiles can also be launched from the context menu of Windows Explorer, and display the MD5/SHA1 hashes of the selected file or folder.
HashMyFiles works on Windows XP/2000/2003/Vista/Windows 7.
If you are looking for a free program to calculate and verify the MD5 checksum of a file, then WinMD5Sum is for you, it’s a lightweight and easy to use freeware, and works on Windows XP / Windows 7.
After you’ve downloaded and installed it, you can click the file to checksum with right button, then choose send to WinMD5Sum, then WinMD5Sum will pop up and calculate the MD5 hash value for you automatically, then you can paste the MD5 hash value copied from the product web page, and press the Compare button to verify it.
You can also launch WinMD5Sum first, then drag and drop file from Windows Explorer to WinMD5Sum.
WinMD5Sum supports the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 7 / Windows XP / 95/ 98 /Me / 2000.
Download it from CNET or the developer’s website.
What is MD5?
In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check the integrity of files. However, it has been shown that MD5 is not collision resistant; as such, MD5 is not suitable for applications like SSL certificates or digital signatures that rely on this property. An MD5 hash is typically expressed as a 32-digit hexadecimal number.( source : http://en.wikipedia.org )
In the last month, we've tell you how to Compare files in two folders with MD5Summer, RekSFV is an alternative to MD5Summer, it’s powerful, easy to use, and gives you more options to customize, RekSFV allows you calculate the MD5 / SHA1 checksum value for every files and subfolders in a folder and verify them.
How to use RekSFV
Press the ‘MD5′ button or ‘SHA1′ button on the toolbar, then press ‘Select File/Folder…’ button in the popup dialog,
select a folder and press ‘OK’, ‘OK’. Then it lets you choose where to save the MD5/SHA1 file, keep the default settings and press ‘save’ button,
then RekSFV will calculate the checksum value recursively, the result will be displayed in the output window, as seen below:
Now you can press the first button on the toolbar to select a folder / directory to be checked, the ‘bad file’ will be displayed in red color, you can view all bad files in the ‘Bad & Missing File(s)’ tab.
Just copy the MD5/SHA1 checksum file to the second folder, and verify it.
Feature List
RekSFV supports Windows XP / Windows 7.
Download the portable version or installation bundle from the developer’s website.
HashTab is the best cross platform MD5 checker freeware, today I’ll tell you the best MD5 checker freeware for Windows 7 / XP, it's easy to use, powerful, portable, effective and highly customization, I am very sure you will like it!
MD5 checksum is the fingerprint of a file, every different file has a unique MD5 value, if two files have the same MD5 checksum, they have the same content. MD5 checker software is often used to confirm that the files are identical or legal, Marxio File Checksum Verifier (FCV) is the best free MD5/SHA1 hash generator and checker, it’s deadly simple to use and has an streamlined and orderly interface, and most importantly, it is packed with many practical features not available in other competitor’s products, for instance:
As we’ve seen, FCV is very flexible, at most cases we want to calculate the MD5 value of a file, however sometimes we need to get the SHA1 value, such as the Windows 7 installer, with other MD5 checker such as HashTab, you will have to switch the checksum type from MD5 to SHA1 before checking, otherwise it will take you a few minutes and gives you the MD5 value! FCV allows you calculate the checksum only when you have changed checksum type from MD5 to SHA1 or have pressed the calculate button!
One of the only drawbacks is that it will check for update every week and warns you if it is older than 2 months, it’s a bit annoying, but you could turns these off under the submenu of “Other settings” and “Check for update” respectively.
Conclusion
I have been using FCV for many months without any problems, it’s a versatile and “must have” MD5/SHA1 checker, it’s by far better than other MD5 checker software, it’s a wonderful gift for all of us, thanks Rarek!
FCV supports Windows 7 / Windows XP / 2000 / Vista.
Download Marxio File Checksum Verifier (FCV) from CNET or the developer’s website.
To compare two single file, you can use WinMerge or just the Windows command FC, but if you desired to compare files in two folders/directories including tens or hundreds of items, this could be a real challenge, it will make you crazy if you do it manually. MD5Summer is a simple and yet practical folder compare freeware, which can gets the jobs done and saves a lot of time for you.
MD5summer has been designed to generates and verifies md5 checksums for multiple files or folders, as we all know, every file has a unique md5 hash value, if two files have the same md5 value, they have the same content. Thus we could use MD5summer to generate md5 checksums for one directory and store the results in a plain text file, then verify md5 checksums for another directory use the previous saved text file. This is especially useful if you want to find the difference between the backup files and the files on your harddisk, or two folders which have different version.
MD5Summer is portable, to use it just download and extract the package, the click md5summer.exe to launch it, first we select a folder and click “Create Sums”,
then we click “Select All” and “Add recursively” to add all the files and subfolders in the root folder, then press OK,
MD5Summer will generate and display all the MD5 hash value for each file, you can then save the result in a text file.
Now we go back to the main panel, choose another folder and press “Verify sums”, then select the checksum text file.
MD5Summer will then list the files which are not same with red icon and the others with green icon.
You can then compare the “red” files with UltraCompare or WinMerge.
IMPORTANT: Files that have different file name will be treated as another file, for these ones you can use Duplicate Cleaner to scan and mark the duplicate files.
MD5Summer works on the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 7/Windows XP/Win95/98/2000/NT and is available as a free download here: http://download.cnet.com.