Here is a cool utility that bakes into your OS file explorer. The utility is an OS extension and once installed you can (on windows) right click on a file and select ‘Properties’, which gives you an additional tab called ‘File Hashes’, which has different hashes of the file. On Mac select “File Hashes” (on 10.5 the “File Hashes” menu item will be found under the “More” submenu). HashTab supports many hash algorithms such as MD5, SHA1, SHA2, RipeMD, HAVAL and Whirlpool. Hashtab is supported as a Windows shell extension and a Mac Finder plugin.
Hash values are used to check the file integrity when you transfer files over a protocol, or after zipping and unzipping the same.
