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.

It is therefor recommended to verify the file integrity of backups regularly to make sure that they can still be used to recover data if the need should arise. Nothing’s worse than to realize that the backups are unusable.

File Check MD5 is a small portable software for Windows that has been designed for that specific purpose. It can be used to compute MD5 hashes of all files in a specific root folder including subfolders. All computed MD5 hashes will be stored in a text file in that root folder.

The Check Files option can then be used to check files on the backup storage with the MD5 hashes of the original files to ensure data integrity.

One interesting option of the software program is to test the md5 hashes that have been previously computed if the text file is located in the same folder as the executable. It would then only be a matter of adding the File Check MD5 software and the text file with the MD5 hashes to the root of the backup to be able to automatically verify the file integrity.

The only thing that is missing is the ability to select a different storage location for the MD5 hashes. This would make it possible to run the software on read only devices as well.