[weinzierl]

I do md5sum (shasum more recently) out of habit for anything large and at least a bit important to me. I started this about 15 years ago when I had a couple of eSATA drives and noticed corrupted files when copying. I've been checking file integrity since, and occasionally I encounter corrupted files - often enough to make me continue my checks.

It was an eye-opener to me to realize that data corruption is much more common than most people think.

On the flips-side because single (or few) bit flips often go unnoticed, people overestimate the impact of data corruption. The idea that if your image or video looks good then it must be intact is flawed. Even software binaries survive a bit of corruption pretty well.

I think in the long run file system based integrity checks everywhere would be great. For now, in a world with a multitude of storage technologies and file systems, shasums will have to do.