Double check your next CD

by Joey Celis Jul 16th 2008

Have you ever created a bunch of CDs to give out to friends and family only to receive some back because they didn't work? Of course they worked since the other ones you sent out were fine. It must be them! But you wouldn't want to start a family feud over a burnt CD so you graciously make another copy. The next time you decide to burn stuff you should double check your work with FileCheckMD5.

So how will FileCheckMD5 help you out? Well part of this is understanding what MD5 is. In the most basic of terms MD5 insures that the copy you made is the same as the source. Often MD5 are used to double check software downloads on the Internet.

Brandon Staggs, creator of FileCheckMD5, developed an application that can recursively scan all the files and folders in your project and create a MD5 file that you can burn onto your CDs. That way, before you start sending out those disc you can double check if all the data made it intact. You can even burn the application along with your files to have the receiver check the integrity of the disc on their end.

Sure you could always just verify that your CDs were burned correctly using the built in checker that came with your burning software but asking your friends to check to make sure the MD5 hash matches sounds much more technical.

Tags: md5, utilities, windows

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tom said 10:24AM on 7-16-2008

When I put super important information onto a CD, I use (on windows) QuickPar and make as much par files as I can. You can make up to 150% recoveribility. Theoretically, if you drilled a hole through the cd and could somehow get the files unaffected by that hole to copy off, using all the parts of the .par files still there you could recover all data. I should do tests sometime. Would Download Squad blog about it if I did?

mrjason said 2:24PM on 7-16-2008

bash users looking for something similar can use my md5tool.sh bash script that wraps around the md5sum gnu utils program:

http://www.worldsworstsoftware.com/md5tool.html

I personally use the script to verify backed up and archived data integrity on a regular basis. The script creates a checksum.md5 file in the directory you specify, that checksum.md5 file has the md5 checksums for every file found below the directory you specified. Then later you can run the script with the "CHECKALL" argument to make the script find and verify every checksum.md5 file it finds.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters