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due to current high price of hdds, I would like to switch from running RAID1 to JBOD + offsite backup (Backblaze). In theory it's a much better approach (if PC gets fried by lighting strike, I still retain all my data), but in practice it will make me vulnerable to file corruption issues (Backblaze will silently replicate all changes and erase past versions after 30 days).

Do you know of any program, that run checksums on all my files and compare them to "Modified:" timestamp (I'm assuming that all hash changes without modified timestamp chnage would indicate file corruption)?

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    Please tell me you are aware that RAID1 and Backup solve different problems, and best practice is to use both. RAID1 provides protection against single hard drive failure - NOT DATA CORRUPTION while backup is supposed to prevent against data corruption, accidental deletion, theft etc). Really, hard drive space is dirt cheap for what it is, and relative to everything else in your PC. Also, for backups, depending on what you are doing, best practice is to use versioning software, failing which incremental backups or snapshots.
    – davidgo
    Mar 9, 2013 at 22:44

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Give Checksum, a try.

This is a freeware utility which generates checksums for files, folders and even entire partitions. It has some command line switches, so there could be a way to use it to achieve what you are setting out to do.

Regarding backups: I would use a RAID 1 array + backup to USB drive daily or weekly, and enable Previous Versions on the RAID 1 array (assuming the OS is Windows 7). So, if a file did get corrupted, I could roll back to the last non-corrupted version in seconds (in most cases). Hard drives are still affordable. I got my 2x 2TB WD Caviar Greens for $90 each (on sale) but now the price has increased again.

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