Re: [digital-curation] FTK Imager-generated checksums

[Seth Shaw]

Are you creating raw, aff, or some other image format? Short answer: checksums should match if you are creating raw images but they won't if you are creating images in another. Long answer: only the raw format keeps the bits in their original order exactly as they came off the disk whereas the others either add metadata, perform compression, or both. FTKImager is smart enough to verify checksums based on the disk data as if reading from the original drive whereas other utilities will only look at the bits as they come out of the image file which, naturally, won't match the disk's original checksums. - Seth

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 2:28 PM, Dorothy Waugh <dorry...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

We have a question about the checksums generated by FTK Imager. Recently we noticed that the checksums generated for our image files by WinMD5 and Checksums For Windows do not match the checksums generated by FTK Imager, whether during the imaging process or later on. 

For example, I created an image about a month ago using FTK Imager. When I use FTK Imager now to generate an additional checksum, the two match. However, if I use another tool, like WinMD5 or Checksums For Windows, to create a checksum for the same image file, I get a different checksum. Both WinMD5 and Checksums For Windows produce matching checksums, but neither match the FTK-generated checksum.

Does anyone know what might be causing these differences? Is FTK checksumming something different from the other tools, even though, as far as I can see,  I am checksumming identical files?

Thank you! 

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