Drive Digest

Drive Digest is a Windows tool capable of processing all files from any directory, in order to analyze and reveal a wide range of practical data, such as MD5 and SHA1 hashes, which can be used to check file integrity.

The utility can even open archives to list containing files. It works with paths longer than 255 characters, counts all files by type, and shows the total file size by type.

Installing Drive Digest is an easy task, provided that you already have .NET Framework. To create a digest, it simply asks for a directory. Before listing the files, however, you can control settings.

For example, you can prevent the tool from calculating MD5 and SHA1 hashes if they aren't important, or to skip ZIP, 7Z and RAR archives. When it comes to compound files, you can allow Drive Digest to expand the compound files within them, as well as to limit the expansion depth and file size.

The main app window has information spread across multiple tabs. The document listing tab includes the full path, path length, extension, size, category, MD5 and SHA1 hash, date of creation, modification and access of each file. Two more attributes are responsible for showing whether or not the files are compound or if their path is too long.

Another area holds the total document summary, where groups are created by content type (e.g. email, Internet, plain text, misc). The count for each filetype is displayed too, along with the cumulative size. Other tabs reveal errors (if any), compound file summary, and notable files.

Some of the settings listed in Drive Digest are meant for a professional version that never got released. Nevertheless, this lite, free-to-use edition comes packed with many useful features dedicated to file analysis.