md5sum repeatedly gives different checksum for same file on same machine

linux filesystems hard-drive hash

11,523

Solution 1

It may be worth running fsck (or the equivalent for whatever filesystem you're using) to fix disk errors. But, it could be the last thing this drive does if it's on its last leg.

Solution 2

The only likely reasons are bad disk or bad RAM, and as the disk is old and you are not experiencing other issues it is less likely to be the RAM.

It could be a dodgey connector/controller: I once had an IDE->USB adaptor go bad resulting in corrupted transfers even thought the drive was perfectly fine.

Solution 3

To be on the safe side I suggest you run memtest86+ over night to make sure that it finds no memory errors.

Solution 4

The root cause is that somehow your RAM is getting corrupted. It is probably a bad stick, but sometimes the devices like the video card can corrupt main memory.

Do not fsck until you verify that the memory is safe. Otherwise fsck is likely to corrupt everything.

Pull out drives, put in a known good system, and FSCK there while you fix this system.

Solution 5

I once had this same problem as well. It turned out to be the hard drive controller on the motherboard.

However, in this case it definitely sounds like a dud hard drive. Hard drives tend to hang onto life by marking sectors bad, transparently, in the background. When sectors finally start to go bad at an OS level the drive ends up expiring very quickly.

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11,523

Lucian Serban

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Lucian Serban almost 2 years

I have a very small and quite old hard drive disk, about 32G.
On to this disk I have copied a largish tar file, about 5G.

When I run md5sum to generate a checksum on this file I repeatedly get different results (on the same machine and the same file). This obviously should not happen.

If I repeat the experiment with a much smaller file, as expected the checksum is the same each time. I can only assume that because the large file is spanning most of the disk, and it is an old drive, I am experiencing a lot of read errors on the hard drive - and it needs replacing? Could there be any other good reason for this? Something I can do to fix the problem other than buying a new disk?

Update: sha1sum also produces inconsistent results.
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  This file isn't /dev/random, right? :D
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  No! BTW - this is on a linux (debian) machine.
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  Are there any interesting messages in the logs ?
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  DO NOT HESITATE. Replace this drive immediately!
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  Browsing thru the questions this morning and coming upon this gave me a chuckle. The title reads something like "Smoke is pouring out of the windows of my house. Do you think I should do something?" I hate to make light of someone else's misfortune, but it just struck me as funny. I'm sick, I guess.
- Admin almost 15 years
  
  Yes, it's a crappy machine. I think it was stored outside for a while too. I can see rust on it. Infact - I'm always a little scared to touch it incase I get an electric shock.
Lucian Serban almost 15 years

Running on Linux - Debian.
Lucian Serban almost 15 years

going for it - running fsck....
Lucian Serban almost 15 years

actually seems to have fixed it!
SilentW almost 15 years

You should still replace the drive ASAP.
spoulson almost 15 years

He did say it was an small, old drive. But, if it were worth keeping you can check out Spinrite to do an analysis and repair. It can tell you how damaged the drive is.
Magellan about 12 years

This is a VERY late answer. Please keep an eye towards the date of the question when providing an answer, and do not rehash areas already covered by others. In this case. the question was posed nearly 3 years ago. I'm sure the problem has resolved itself in one fashion or another long since.