"expert" filecopy

hi,

i'm currently looking for a program that does something like a hash check on files after they have been copied from one location to another, to see if they are really 100% copies.

i will soon start a project to copy LOTS of stuff from dvd's to a new HDD, and it could be that some of the cd's are in not so good of a condition. also i heard that windows copy sometimes makes little mistakes (byte-wise). is that true ?
i just want to be sure afterwards that all the files on the new hdd are exactly the same as on the dvd's.


so if anyone can give me a few tips...
does windows commander have such a feature ?

cheers,
gh

You could try file compare software.
There should be plenty of free ones around
also look at http://www.google.no/search?q=file+c...ient=firefox-a
looks like you can do it in dos.

First of all, let's clear up the misconception: Windows copy does NOT make little mistakes (byte-wise).

Every sector of a data drive is protected by a checksum held just outside that sector. If the checksum calculated from the data part of the sector does not match the checksum held on the media then an error is reported.

While there is a miniscule chance that the data and the checksum could both be corrupted in such a way that the error is not detected, that's a problem with the media not with Windows. All attempts to copy the information, no matter what software or OS is used, will suffer from the same problem.

Since the problem is on the media, any additional verification software will suffer from the same problem unless an additional file hash is calculated before the media is created.

If you've got the opportunity to create such a file hash, the most common method currently in use is the md5 hash.

You can get software to generate and check this hash here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/md5summer/

md5 hashes are only good for comparing the cd's contents is the same as the original if you took a md5 hash when the content was on your hdd.

those sfv files that come with scene releases can be used for this purpose if you actually saved the rars.