File Integrity Checksum
Checksums are used to verify the data integrity of a file, usually from automated processes and systems.
File checksums can be automatically calculated for files that are uploaded to your Files.com site.
You can select which types of checksum are generated for uploaded files. By default (after December 3rd, 2024), checksums are not generated for uploaded files.
Files.com supports generating checksums of types SHA256, SHA1, MD5, and CRC32. Each type of checksum can be enabled individually.
As a best practice, we recommend not enabling any checksums unless they are required by your automated processes and users.
Checksums take time to compute and may not be immediately available when the upload completes. Larger files will take longer to have their checksums computed than smaller files.
File upload performance is slightly improved when checksums are disabled.
Viewing Checksum Information
Within our web portal, you can view checksum information in the metadata panel by selecting or previewing a file.
Checksum information can also be viewed and accessed using our Command Line Integration (CLI) App, our SDKs, and our file object API.
Legacy Checksum Mode
Prior to December 3rd, 2024, only generation of MD5 and CRC checksums were supported. These checksums were automatically calculated for all files uploaded to Files.com storage regions. There were no options to specify which checksum types to generate or exclude.
MD5 and CRC file checksums generated prior to December 3rd, 2024 were preserved and retained.
Do I Need A Checksum?
Checksums are used to check whether there was an error introduced during transmission which caused the contents of the file to change.
Most users will never use a checksum themselves. However, some automated processes might use programmatic methods to verify a file checksum. These processes might use the checksum, both before and after a transmission, prior to continuing any processing of that file.
If you have automated business processes that rely on the use of a checksum for verifying file integrity then you should enable the corresponding checksum type for your Files.com site.
Checksum Limitations
Checksums are only generated for files that are uploaded to any of the Files.com storage regions. Checksums are not generated for files that are uploaded to mounted remote servers.
Checksums are only generated for files smaller than 250 GB in size (the limit is 10GB if you have not manually enabled checksums and are instead relying on the legacy default choice of MD5 and CRC32). If you require checksums for larger files, please contact us to discuss your size requirements.