Checking the integrity of a copied folder

Question

I am copying a big folder (300Gb) into an external hard drive. I want to make sure the copied file is complete and not corrupt before deleting the original file. How can I do that in ubuntu?

Answer 1

You could use rsync --checksum to check the files. Or simply use sha256sum or similar to check the files manually. Using rsync is in my opinion more comfortable because it automatically checks recursively, but that largely depends on your usecase.

If you really require absolute integrity, you should really consider using an error correction code . Hard drives don't keep data integrity forever, a bit might change from time to time.