One of the commands built into OS X is md5, a way to create a simple 'fingerprint' of the contents of the file.  The idea is you can verify whether a copy of a file is the same, by making sure the two md5 'fingerprints' are the same.  Execution of the command is simple:

md5 [filepath]

...which will then output the resulting fingerprint, or hash.

However, how do you do this for verifying an entire folder?  Use the following, which takes each file inside a directory, creates a hash for each, then re-hashes all of them together again to get a final fingerprint, which you can verify on the copy.

find DIRECTORY -type f -exec md5 {} + | awk '{print $1}' | sort | md5

 

Im still somewhat of a newbie when it comes to these sorts of things, but if others have recommendations when it comes to this sort of thing, by all means let me know.

Posted
AuthorMike Muir