How can I generate an MD5 sum for a folder on Windows?

Question

There are several posts about generating MD5 sums for files and/or folders on various Windows platforms. However, none of these worked for me. I tried:

• Windows CertUtil: CertUtil -hashfile myFileName MD5 returns "Access is denied" on all folders (my cmd is running with admin privileges),
• HashTab: does not show up in the Properties dialog in Explorer as advertised,
• Summer Properties: does not show up in the Properties dialog either,
• HashCheck: does not allow MD5 for folders, only files,
• md5checker: does not compute the MD5 of the entire folder (only files in it).

At this point I am starting to get a bit desperate. Please note that I am using Windows 7 x64.

For info, if possible, I am trying to find a tool that would allow something like this in Linux:

find DIR -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | sort -k 2 | md5sum

Solution 1

None of these quite did what I needed so I came up with this alternative...

@echo off
for /R . %%f in (*.*) do (
    echo | set/p="%%f - "
    certutil -hashfile "%%f" MD5 | findstr /V ":"
)

Outputs in the format "<Path><Filename> - <Hash>" at one line per file.

Solution 2

If you want to use a GUI, I can recommend Fsum Frontend.

Fsum Frontend is a free and easy-to-use tool that allows to compute message digests, checksums and HMACs for files and text strings. It supports drag-and-drop and you can handle multiple files at once. The checksum generated can be used to verify the integrity of the files.

It supports 96 algorithms: [...] md5 [...]

---

As the name implies, Fsum Frontend is a GUI for (among others) SlavaSoft fsum.

A fast and handy command line utility for file integrity verification. It offers a choice of 13 of the most popular hash and checksum functions for file message digest and checksum calculation.

Its features include:

• Possibility to act recursively. FSUM can operate not only on files from a specific directory, but also on files from all subdirectories of the specified directory;
• Work with large size files. (Tested on file sizes of up to 15 GB);
• Full compatibility with md5sum utility

Solution 3

You can achieve the equivalent to your Unix command (minus the sorting) with the following:

for /R . %f in (*.*) do @certutil -hashfile "%f" MD5

You can change the dot (.) for whatever folder you want to recurse from, and the *.* to whatever file mask you need in order to narrow down your file set.

Solution 4

PowerShell provides loop statement, some people may prefer this syntax

foreach($f in dir){ certutil -hashfile "$f" md5}

Reference: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/PowerShell/Loops

Solution 5

Late to the question but finding only unaccepted answers here is what I have found:

function Get-FolderHash ($folder) {
 dir $folder -Recurse | ?{!$_.psiscontainer} | %{[Byte[]]$contents += [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($_.fullname)}
 $hasher = [System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1]::Create()
 [string]::Join("",$($hasher.ComputeHash($contents) | %{"{0:x2}" -f $_}))
}

Copy and paste this code to PowerShell console and type:

Get-FolderHash "C:\CustomFolder"

Runtime may vary depending on folder contents.

View more solutions

Comments

[Biswapriyo]

Make a ZIP and hash it.

[Klangen]

@Biswapriyo That would work, except I have very large folders with hundreds of GB in them...

[Ramhound]

CertUtil only works on files. You would have to write a PowerShell script to loop through each file contained in a folder. If you were using Windows 10 you could use WSL calculate the hash.

[user1686]

Note that there is no standard method for hashing a folder (which isn't a single byte stream but an unordered collection), so different programs will give different results.

[Biswapriyo]

Can it be done with any build in command line tools? And without using any 3rd party tools?

[Ramhound]

@Biswapriyo - No; It's a GUI application for a third-party utility. The user didn't preclude the use of third-party applications, even if they did, does not change the fact this is an appropriate solution.

[Scott - Слава Україні]

“… easier to understand and use” than what?  I find the CMD-language for /R . %f in (*.*) do to be just as easy to understand and use as the PowerShell version.

[Endle_Zhenbo]

Personally, I prefer the syntax with {}. You're right, I should avoid the subjective words in my answer

[user2480144]

Crashes when your path contains some uncommon chars.