Is BIU able to generate/output some kind of checksum when it images?

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ohaya1000
Posts: 185
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 5:02 pm

Is BIU able to generate/output some kind of checksum when it images?

Post by ohaya1000 »

Hi,

I use only the imaging that is included in BIU to image my partitions/hard drives (e.g., entire disk), and I was wondering if there is a way that BIU can output some kind of checksum that can later be used to re-validate the .tbi file?

Most recently, I have been using md5sums.exe after the image/.tbi file has been made by BIU, but for really large .tbi (like > 400GB), running the md5sums can take a really long time (plus it pretty much ties up my machine while it is calculating).

I am curious how you all are accomplishing this now?

Thanks, and BTW, slightly belated Happy New Year!!

Jim

P.S. When I do the imaging in BIU, I only choose "Validate" and not byte-by-byte (that would take really long time)
ohaya1000
Posts: 185
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 5:02 pm

Re: Is BIU able to generate/output some kind of checksum when it images?

Post by ohaya1000 »

Hi,

I am running into a weird situation:

I was using BIU imaging to do entire disk backups, initially to one hard drive, with validation enabled (standard validation, NOT byte-byte validation).

After making a backup (to hard drive), I would run md5ums.exe on the .tbi file, and I would make a text file with the output from md5sums, info about what was in the image, date, etc.

Later, I ended up having to copy those files to another larger disk (using Windows Explorer copy), and then even later, I ended up copying the files to another larger disk again.

So I ended up with 3 different disks, with the same .tbi files.

I think I along the way, in 2 cases, I neglected create the text file with the md5sum, and when I did discover that I was missing the file, I ran md5sums on the 1st disk and create the text file on the first disk, then copy the text file to the other disks that were missing the text file.

So this morning, I was running md5sums on the 3rd disk to re-check the md5sums for .tbi file, and I found one of the tbi files where md5sum on the 2nd disk did not match the md5sum on the 3rd disk :(!!

Then, booted into BIU and ran a validate on that same tbi file on the 3rd disk, and the validation said it was "successful"!!

So now I am kind of puzzled: Is it possible that 2 copies of the same tbi file would have different md5sum, BUT when I run validate in BIU imaging, the BIU validate would be successful?

Sorry for the kind of confusing scenario!!

Thanks,
Jim
ohaya1000
Posts: 185
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 5:02 pm

Re: Is BIU able to generate/output some kind of checksum when it images?

Post by ohaya1000 »

Hi,

Ok, thanks and you can ignore my last post :(!!

I am not sure what happened when I was testing earlier, but I re-ran all the md5sums on both drives, and it looks like the corresponding md5sum values all matched exactly this time!!

Thanks,
Jim
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