Best way to verify integrity of backup data on external HDD?

[apinomus]

I recently bought an external hard drive dedicated to making manual backups of my data. As part of my monthly backup routine, I want to run a verification that checks that all files on the backup drive are the same as they were when I originally copied them to the drive the previous month. I want to verify that all files are still readable and that if I needed to issue a backup, the backup would succeed.

What application can I use to do this on Windows? Will SFV files work?

I'm concerned about this because Freeagent drives are known to crap out on people so I want to check up on the health of the drive every month. To minimize wear on the drive I only pull it out once per month to perform the backup.

 

[RebateMonger]

There are two types of backup verification that I do. I use XP's built-in NTBackup for the bulk of my backups, because it's free and because I understand how to use it and how to do recoveries with it.

First, I always set the "Verify Backup" option in NTBackup. It doesn't take much longer for that verification pass. It also ensures that the backup file has been fully written and closed if you are using a SATA controller that doesn't allow for the write cache to be turned off.

Second, I'll restore an actual file or two from the backup to the main hard drive. That tells you if the backup drive is functional and verfies that the NTBackup Catalog is intact.

 

[apinomus]

I actually found that my Nero Burning ROM 6 package had Nero BackItUp which appears to work to at least copy the files I tell it to and verify them after copying.

I couldn't find an application that would correctly calculate checksums for an SFV file to verify the integrity of all the files. Does anybody know of an app that would do this??

 

[apinomus]

I found this little freeware app that is really straight-forward. It's called FileCheckMD5. It creates an MD5 sum for each file from a selected folder/drive. It's a stand-alone EXE and at 289K is small enough to fit on a USB drive or burn to a CD with the MD5 to use for later verification.

http://www.brandonstaggs.com/filecheckmd5/