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The recent MD5 post reminded me that of course MD5 is not a cryptographically secure checksum - it can be spoofed. Especially, when getting files from untrusted sources an MD5 checksum is not a proof of a valid file. But it is a fast algorithm that can be used for your own storage and backup needs. A secure algorithm is the SHA256, which can be also calculated on Windows without any additional downloads. A quick sample batch file could look like this: @echo off echo. echo Running certutil... echo. certutil -hashfile [filepath] sha256 echo. echo Should be SHA256: echo BD708C0E71E75BD73C636A957451A0CC2C84D7E587AB8FC549141074EF01AF7D echo. pause A more detailed discussion of pros and cons follows below: MD5 (Message-Digest Algorithm 5) Pros: Speed and Low Overhead: Computes faster than SHA-256, making it lightweight for scanning massive drives or deduplicating huge ...

Markdown is widely used these days. But we still have lots of old documents that once in a while need to be brought into that scope. pandoc [Path to Word document].docx -o [Path to Word document].md

For ages I was using RapidCRC to create checksums. Originally, CRC checksums, but already for a few years MD5 checksums. But alas, as virtual machines took over much of the daily work and they hardly are all well set up for an extended toolset, I step back to what is available on any Windows machine, be it Windows 11 or Windows Server. Get-FileHash "file" -Algorithm MD5