How to verify your downloaded files using MD5 Checksum on Windows?
MD5 stands for Message Digest version 5 . The MD5 algorithm takes a file (the “message”) of any size, and reduces it down to a code that looks like this: “ac30ce5b07b0018d65203fbc680968f5″ (the “digest”). The brilliant thing about the MD5 algorithm is that if the message changes by so much as a single byte, it will produce a completely different digest. An MD5 sum is a string of letters and numbers that acts like a fingerprint for a file. If two files have the same MD5 sum, the files are exactly alike - which is why MD5 "fingerprints" can verify whether or not your downloaded file got corrupted in transit, hence it is used to verify the integrity of files, as virtually any change to a file will cause its MD5 hash to change. MD5 digests have been widely used in the software world to provide some assurance that a transferred file has arrived intact. For example, file servers often provide a pre-computed MD5 (known as md5sum) checksum for the files, so that a user can compare th...