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I'm looking for a light, fast hash/checksum calculator (eg. MD5, SHA1, etc.). I've been using HashCalc and it works fine enough, but I was wondering if there was something better.

When downloading .ISOs from MS BizSpark, I've found that it's essential to check the SHA1, and I'm sure that other people have found the same.

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HashTab looks good.

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I like how HashTab is integrated in windows explorer and support essential checksums: md5, sha-1 & crc32. But as a portable app I don't have found better than HashCalc – fluxtendu Feb 3 '10 at 21:11
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I think HashTab gets my vote, thanks for the suggestion. It's integrated into the GUI (but in a less intrusive way than others) and it's very quick, too. (digestIT looked promising, but was very slow and has issues with files over 2GB.) I think I'll keep HashCalc around for any unusual hashes, too. Thanks again. – Johnny W Feb 4 '10 at 11:17
After having tested the new HashTab, I realise that I have confused HashTab & HashCheck. So, look at my new answer: superuser.com/questions/104355/… – fluxtendu Feb 4 '10 at 14:00
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up vote 5 down vote

The HashCheck Shell Extension is similar to HashTab, but better (supports checksum files and multiple files at once), except the rare hash algorithms.

  • Shell integration: checksums at your fingertips (support multiple files and directories):

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  • Checksum/hash verification: process and verify the checksums/hashes stored in checksum files (.sfv, .md4, .md5, or .sha1 file extension.):

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  • Create checksum files

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  • Lean and mean: very small memory and disk footprint (the 32-bit version consumes less than 100 KiB of disk space). It is also very fast and responsive; it can, for example, load and parse a SFV file with a million entries in just a fraction of a second.

  • Free and open-source

  • Compatibility: international support and 64-bit-compatible

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Ooh, this looks very interesting. I'll check it out, thanks. – Johnny W Feb 4 '10 at 16:00
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up vote 3 down vote

My choice:

NirSoft's HashMyFiles is small utility that allows you to calculate the MD5 and SHA1 hashes of one or more files in your system. You can easily copy the MD5/SHA1 hashes list into the clipboard, or save them into text/html/xml file.

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HashMyFiles can also be launched from the context menu of Windows Explorer, and display the MD5/SHA1 hashes of the selected file or folder.

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I'm a great fan of NirSoft products, they're pure quality. You may want to check out NirLauncher: a handy launch GUI for all their system utilities. It doesn't stop there however - you can now include the entire Sysinterals Suite as well. All free and all portable ... a 'must have' for techie's toolbox. :)

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Thanks for the heads up, I'll check out those apps. – Johnny W Feb 4 '10 at 11:19
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up vote 2 down vote

"De Facto", you say? Well, there isn't really a standard one everyone uses, but some may remember the good old digestIT 2004. An excellent lightweight app for calculating and verifying MD5 and SHA-1 digests. It integrates into the Windows context menu so it is quickly accessible at any time:

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For verifying a hash from a website, it's as easy as right click -> digestIT 2004 -> Verify (hash type)

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Thanks for the effort you took with this post. – Johnny W Feb 4 '10 at 11:20
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up vote 1 down vote

The command line tools md5sum and sha1sum that are available in Cygwin are very useful.

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