PAR2 SFV MD5 Data Transfer

[jaki]

Here's the deal. I've filled up my external hard drive and I'm going to be getting a new one. When I get the new one I'm going to be transfering all the data from my old drive on to the new one. The old drive has a LOOOOT of stuff on it. The reason for the transfer is because its formatted in FAT32 and i'm going to reformat it as NTFS. Anyways the question is, should I par2, or MD5 the entire drive before I transfer all the information, or is it unlikely that the transfer will corrupt the files?

[DaggerLite]

It is very unlikely that you'll corrupt any files, unless you stress the drives more than necessary (e.g. download to the receiving disk while moving). If you really want to be sure, CRC32 (.sfv) should cover corruption of such relatively small files, but I think it'll be a waste of time.

My points:

1) The only times I've (knowingly) encountered corrupt data have been when downloading under a stressed system, recovering previously deleted files or burning a DVD too fast.
2) Original checksums can be nice to have for files that will be stored over a longer period. I personally store checksums per anime, but I've never really used them. "Nice to have" is my mindset.

[jaki]

can sfv repair corrupted files, or just verify the integrity or the file?

[DaggerLite]

It just verifies.

[kureshii]

If you're doing the transfer in Windows, just use Teracopy. It does CRC checks before and after the move/copy to ensure data corruption doesn't occur during the transfer process.

[blubart]

just fyi: you can convert a fat drive to ntfs without loosing the data on it.

[jaki]

is it safe to change it to NTFS without copying it over? I would probably cry if i lost all that data...

and I'm running linux at the moment, though I do have a windows disc. I might wind up using that because I can't seem to find a way to do it in Linux without it being drawn out and tedious.

[blubart]

i did it in Win7 for both of my 1TB external drives without problems - can't give any guaranties though.

[nstgc]

I personally wouldn't risk it. I myself make hash tables for just about everything. If I move files from one partition to another, I make sure they can be checked.

I trust nothing.

Also some times there is user error and you may forget a file or two. Thats happened to me several times.

[jaki]

is there a program that i can use that will make an sfv or some sort of a hash file for every folder on a drive, or do i have to go through every folder and create an sfv for each one?

[nstgc]

in windows I used Quick SFV. That will make one large hash table which checks everything in the folder and any folders under it. In linux I use CFV, which I prefer. depending on the switch used you can make a table for only the files in the directory, make a table for each directory in that directory, or one table for everything like in Quick SFV.