MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Bulk file integrity checker for a variety of formats

> Let's say I want to check the integrity of certain files. Some are images (jpg, png,
> etc.), some are movies (avi, mkv, etc.), some are compressed files (rar, zip, 7z, you
> get the idea). Is there a tool which can open and test for file integrity for a
> variety of formats? So I don't have to test each type with a certain tool or do
> cumbersome maneouvers in the dark.

Krick is right on the money.

Very difficult to check that a file is 100% error free. You aren't just checking for file system issues here, you also need to check for tampering, corruption, accidental changes / overwrites, etc.

Your best bet might be to checksum your files that are known to be "good" and save the checksums for these. And then periodically re-checksum your files and compare the new checksums against the saved checksums and report any files that mismatch.

A tool I wrote years ago did exactly this (Freeware, Windows 95 or later, see Checksum Calculator). Ford USA were using it on their test PCs to make sure things hadn't been tampered with. Haven't updated it since 2007, and it only supports CRC32 at the moment - which is probably good enough for basic use.

To be really sure a file handn't changed, it would be good to add support for better checksums and also encrypt and secure the stored checksum database - just in case ...

Moose