Notebooks
Q: How can you check files and folders after copy to external HD using checksums, md5 etc ?
Hello everyone,
I am about to perform a clean install of the OS from Mavericks to Sierra. As with any OS upgrade, I backed up all my data to an external hard drive through USB (I think 3.0).
- I manually backed up everything using Command-C and Command-V
- When asked if I wanted to replace files or folders, I said yes and choose the option "for all".
- By the way if someone could confirm that there is no problems that can occur when replacing a folder with less stuff in it with another folder with the same stuff but including new stuff, that would be great relief. For example: replacing A(1,2) with A(1,2,3,4,5) where A is the name of the folder and 1,2...etc are files and subfolders.
- I checked and compared the contents of all the folders copied to the external HD using Kaleidoscope, also available on the Mac App Store (http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/). It checks the differences between folders etc.
- However, and this is my main interrogation: how can I be sure that the data copied to the external HD was not corrupted during the transfers. I heard that you can use checksums, hash or md5 to check a file is valid. But I don't know anything about it and I thought it was mainly to check files downloaded from the internet. However since here I copied personal documents and photos that are dear to me, over several copies that took around 1 hour every time, I would like to be absolutely sure before formatting and installing Sierra, that everything has been copied correctly. Is there a reliable app I can use to compare folders and files from my Mac with the ones copied on the external HD using checksums, md5, hash etc ?
Thanks a lot for the help you can provide me !
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
Posted on Sep 23, 2016 4:43 AM