Hash Tool is a very useful tool for calculating the hashes of files and text messages. It uses some of the very common algorithms for calculating the hash checksums such as MD5, SHA1, SHA-256, SHA-314, SHA-512 and CRC32. These calculated hashes can be used to verify the integrity of downloaded files or for comparing two files and seeing if they are identical.
Hash Tool has a very easy to understand user interface. There is nothing complicated in it. It has four sections – input files, hash type, hash list and the results. We have to first select a hash type from the drop-down list. We can choose from MD5, SHA1, SHA-256, SHA-314, SHA-512 and CRC32 hash types. If you choose SHA-512 then it is going to take a bit longer to calculate the hashes compared to CRC32 or MD5.
After we have selected a hashing algorithm, we can proceed with choosing files for which we want to calculate the hashes. There are two ways to do this – either click on the “Select Files” button to pick the files or we can drag-n-drop the files on the Hash Tool window. It will calculate the hashes (of the type we have chosen), for all the selected files instantly. For larger size files, it may take some extra time as expected.
For finding the hashes of text/messages, we have to type them in the “Hash List” one per line. Each line is considered a separate text message. Afterwards, we can click on the “Hash from List” button and the hashes are displayed in the results. The displayed hashes can be made to be in all-uppercase letters if needed.
For the files, it shows the full path name of the files along with the calculated hashes. In the case of text messages, it displays only the calculated hashes. The results can be exported to a plain text files or to a CSV database file which can be opened in Microsoft Office.
You can download Hash Tool from https://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/hash.html.