The portable software needs to be placed in the base directory. It can for instance be placed in a download folder or the root folder of a disk compilation.

The main interface displays a Scan and Verify link. Scan will initiate the scan of all files that reside in the base folder and its subfolders. MD5 hashes are generated and stored in a database file in the same folder.

dvdsig

The program displays status information in its interface, usually if a file is not accessible or other problems related to generating the MD5 values. All MD5 hashes are stored in a file named dvdsig.md5.

DVDsig will automatically recognize that file and refuse to run the scan again if it exists. Selecting the Verify option instead will process all files in the folder a second time and compare the hashes to the ones stored in the database file.

The output lists the total files, files that were identical, bad files and missing files. Bad and missing files are displayed with their file name in the interface so that it is possible to react on the file change right away.

DVDsig has been primarily designed by the developer as a file verification software for DVD-ROM and CD-ROM media, but it can be used for other verification purposes as well. Its small size makes it an ideal program to be included on removable media or optical media.

A software that is able to protect your important files against corruption is called ICE ECC which creates so called recovery files that can be used to recover files that are corrupted or partially damaged. They can’t recover files that are not there anymore of course but most of the time you have partial files that can be recovered. This is a like the Par2 file system which I have written about earlier in this week.

ICE ECC offers some advantages over Par2 files. First it is possible to create recovery files for directories with no limitation on file size, amount of files and names. The recovery files themselves are compressed to make it easier to store them on your system. Last but not least some tests that have been published on the developers website claim that ICE ECC is a lot faster than Quickpar for instance. I do not think that this is such an important factor after all unless you create recovery files every day.