Portable Advanced File Hash 2011

Designed as the portable edition of Advanced File Hash, this small-sized application comes to your aid in order to calculate the checksum of any file, regardless of its format. It offers support for MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, RIPEMD and CRC32. Although it may sound complicated to work with, the program is actually geared toward all types of users, including beginners.

Portability advantages

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can drop the program files in any part of the hard disk and just click the executable to launch the app, as long as you have administrative privileges.
Another option is to save Advanced File Hash to a USB flash disk or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any PC effortlessly. It requires .NET Framework to work, which is included in the setup pack in case you don't have it already. Worth mentioning is that the utility does not add new entries to the Windows registry or Start menu.

Straightforward UI and settings

The interface is clean and intuitive, and allows you to import files and entire directories using the file browser and folder view only, since the drag-and-drop function is unsupported.

Batch calculations and exporting options

As you may have suspected by now, batch processing is possible, which means that you can add multiple files to the list and discover their hashes at the same time. In addition, it is possible to save the current list and import it later, at a more convenient time.

Add files and switch through different checksums

Once files are added to the list, you can view their names, full paths and checksums, as well as toggle the different types of hashes to get instant answers. What's more, you can change the priority level if the task takes too long to finish.

Compare hashes and generate them from text
Furthermore, Advanced File Hash implements options for comparing the hashes of two files to find out whether they are identical or not, generate signatures from a simple string of text, disable grid lines and automatic checkups for software updates, as well as change the UI language.

Evaluation and conclusion

We have not come across any problems in our testing, since Advanced File Hash did not hang, crash or pop up error messages. It requires low CPU and RAM to work properly and displays signatures rapidly. All in all, this tool comes bundled with a surprisingly rich set of features dedicated to calculating, generating and comparing checksums.