In cryptography, hashing is one way encryption which cannot be decrypted to find the source message. But these hashes are unique for a source message and therefore can be used for identifying the messages or finding if the original message has become corrupted/modified.
We can generate hashes for files as well. When the file’s content are modified even by a single byte, its hash code also changes and we can tell if the original file has been tempered with.
Using a freeware called CHK Hash Tool, we can calculate file hashes using a number of hashing algorithms. We can also compare the calculated file hashes with those that are provides by the file source so that we can compare them and see if the files have been modified or damaged.
Using the CHK Hash Tool, we can calculate hashes, verify the integrity of files (by comparing the hashes) and find the duplicates (when two or more files have an identical hash).
CHK has a very modern and convenient user interface. We begin by opening a folder or file in CHK which instantly all the files inside the folder along with their calculated file hashes. By default, it uses SHA-256 hashing algorithm but we can choose from a large number of algorithms such as Adler32, BLAKE2b, BLAKE2bp, BLAKE2s, BLAKE2s-128, BLAKE2sp, BLAKE3, CRC16, CRC32, CRC32C, CRC64, MD4, MD5, RIPEMD-160, SHA-1, SHA-1 (Base32), SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-256 (Base64), SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA-512/224, SHA-512/256, SHA3-224, SHA3-256, SHA3-384, SHA3-512, Tiger, Whirlpool, xxHash32, xxHash64.
Duplicate files are shown grouped together with a highlight color. We can right-click on any of the files and choose to scan it using VirusTotal, copy the hash code to the clipboard or paste the hash into CHK for comparison.
CHK Hash Tool is a portable application for finding the file hashes. It is very fast and supports drag-n-drop interface too. We recommend it for all the users who want to find and compared file hashes.
You can download CHK Hash Tool from https://compressme.net/.