UI Checksums Panel
The Checksums Panel displays cryptographic hash values for the active image.
These checksums are used to identify, compare, and verify images across formats and representations.
Displayed hashes include:
- CRC32
- MD5
- SHA-1
The checksums shown in this panel are intended to answer the question:
“Do these images contain the same disk data?”
Rather than representing the raw image file in all cases, the checksums are designed to reflect the logical disk contents in a consistent and meaningful way.
For basic sector images, the checksums represent:
- The hash of the entire image file contents
- All bytes in the file are included
This corresponds to a traditional file checksum.
For advanced sector and bitstream images, the checksums represent:
- The hash of the reconstructed disk data
- Only sector data that is known to be valid is included
- Structural metadata, gaps, weak bits, and unreadable data are excluded
The checksum is calculated by iterating through all tracks and sectors and combining only the data payload of sectors with a valid data checksum.
This approach ensures that images with different physical layouts or encoding methods can still be compared based on the data they contain.
Using reconstructed sector data rather than raw file bytes allows:
- Meaningful comparison between different image formats
- Stable checksums for bitstream images with variable encoding details
- Exclusion of corrupted or unverifiable data from identification
As a result, checksums remain useful even when images differ at the physical or representation level.
- The checksums always reflect the active image
- Checksums are read-only and informational
- A checksum difference does not necessarily indicate data loss
- The calculation method depends on image type by design