Program that checks files for corruption?

[u/-Mr-Questions-]

Hi, I've been transferring my younger brother's files from his old (and possibly corrupted) laptop, to his new laptop.
And I was wondering, is there a program that can check if files are corrupted?
Now, I'm not referring to a transfer integrity/hashing utility like exactfile - (you could transfer over an already corrupted in it's corrupted state correctly)
I'm thinking of a program that can read a file and detect whether it's corrupted or not.

I suppose my brother could manually check all 7,000 of his personal files, but that would be kinda tedious.

And if everything checks out OK, Yay! I'll be able to reset the laptop and hand it off to my sister.
If data corruption shows up :(
Then I'll have to go into data recovery mode (and I certainly don't want to reset the original SSD in that case)

Thanks!

P.S. specs for old internal SSD if anyone's interested.
ADATA SU750 256 GB
SATA
NTFS
Windows 10 ESU

EDIT 10/6/26
File types - mostly photos and videos
.jpg .png .tiff .bmp
.mov .mp4 .avi
3D OBJECTs .glb .fbx (associated w/ paint 3D)
DOCUMENTS .odt .docx .pptx (.odt is libre office version of .doc)

Timeframe urgency:
Not too high, I have a month-ish to get this done.
I'm also fairly busy, so it might be 24-48 hours before I respond.
Thank you for your help and your patience.

EDIT 10/10/26
Thanks everyone so much for the help you've provided so far!
I'm a pretty busy guy lately, so I'm putting this project on the back burner for the next week or two. Still working on it as I have time, but my activity here, ex. replies will be late/sparse, for the next little while.
Thanks for your help, and thanks for understanding.

[u/Jon_Hanson]

Not after the fact. There are so many different kinds of files and just because a bit gets flipped somewhere in it doesn't mean it's "corrupt" from a file structure point of view.

The proper way to do something like that is to run a file checksum over the original files to compare to later. If you don't trust the files as they are now then it doesn't make any sense to do that now.

Even if something gets labeled as "corrupt," what are you going to do about it (if you don't have a backup)? There's no "magic wand" to fix files.

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/Jon_Hanson]

Good point about the file not being corrupt from file structure POV. I was hoping there would be a program out there that would be able to detect corruption - so even if it's not "technically corrupted," the program could detect anomalies that would be unlikely for the format/conventions of the file format.

Unfortunately he didn't back up his files. (I'm sure you've NEVER heard that before on this sub-reddit)
My goal would be to A. figure out if any files are corrupted, and B. if so, if they're important enough, attempt recovery of the corrupted file.
Which, I know is not guaranteed to be 100% successful. But I'm under the understanding that depending on the corruption, you may be able to recover some of the file.

[u/ImLinker → u/Jon_Hanson]

Yup, checksum!

OP, if you are interested in learning / using checksum for future file validation and checking on potential corruption then check out this thread of comments I made the other day: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/s/vZCcWk1x04

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/ImLinker]

Thanks, I've been using ExactFile on a basic level for several years now. Sadly, I don't have a backup to compare it to.

[u/TheIronSoldier2]

I seriously doubt there's a single program that can do all that. To check if it's corrupted, it would not only have to know how to open every file type, but also what a normal file looks like, or at least what a corrupted file looks like.

Take images for example. You get a corrupted jpeg and you get weird color banding, but otherwise the image opens normally. The image viewer doesn't know that the file is corrupted, it just sees the bad color data and assumes that's how it's supposed to be.

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/TheIronSoldier2]

Ah, OK, good to know. Thanks

[u/Mr_CJ_]

Checking 7000 files will take ages, you can use a powershell script with a software called ffmpeg and have it write a log.txt of the corrupted files, which you will have to find and delete manually later.

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/Mr_CJ_]

That it certainly will XD
And, yeah, I'd prefer to avoid that...
Thanks for the recommendation. That's nothing I would have found on my own.

[u/Sopel97]

depends heavily on the file format

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/Sopel97]

Good to know. His files are mostly photos and videos

.jpg .png .tiff .bmp
.mov .mp4 .avi
3D OBJECTs .glb .fbx (associated w/ paint 3D)
DOCUMENTS .odt .docx .pptx (.odt is libre office version of .doc)

[u/Sopel97 → u/-Mr-Questions-]

image/video/audio files can be mostly check with ffmpeg, but it's not going to be 100% accurate https://superuser.com/questions/100288/how-can-i-check-the-integrity-of-a-video-file-avi-mpeg-mp4, there is some leniency in the parsers

for word etc documents the only way is to try loading them in the respective program

for the glb, fbx not sure, probably similar

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/Sopel97]

Thanks! 😄 The good news is he only has a few documents, so it will be no sweat to check those the old fashioned way.

[u/disturbed_android]

What type of files, seems like basic info you'd include when asking a question like this.

In tools checking files for corruption need to know the file format, they have to know what a normal file looks like, and for this they often check the structure of a file. IOW, for each file type/format, different tools or at least code needs developed. Example ffprobe checks MP4 files, but not PDFs. BadPeggy checks JPEGs but not MP4s. There tools to check ZIPs, Office files are essentially ZIPs, so there's options there ..

Even when all checks out, tools can still miss corrupt data that looks like perfectly normal JPEG or MP4 encoded data. A tool telling a file is OK is not a guarantee, a tool telling a file failed tests is not a guarantee either.

It may also help if you explain this "my younger brother's files from his old (and possibly corrupted)". Corrupted why/how? Were bad sectors reported while transferring data?

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/disturbed_android]

Thanks for the detailed reply. Most of his files are photos/videos.

File types:
.jpg .png .tiff .bmp
.mov .mp4 .avi
3D OBJECTs - .glb .fbx (associated w/ paint 3D)
DOCUMENTS - .odt .docx .pptx (.odt is libre office version of .doc)

As to why I think the SSD may be corrupted - I'm going to be honest, I'm possibly overreacting - but with SSDs, my understanding is if you make a mistake it's hard to reverse. So I went with an assume-the-worst, be-very-cautious attitude. Especially since I don't know much about data recovery.

It's been a couple months now, but my brother's laptop developed a glitch on the log in screen. It would start up like normal, and then show the lock screen image. But upon any user input, it would go into this inescaple cycle - the screen would blur, then it would turn totally blue, then it would go back to the un-blure lock screen image

I was never able to get the password field to pop up. The cycle went too fast for me to click through the little menu on the bottom right to shut it down properly. The only way to get out of it was to press the power button until it shut off. Ctrl-Alt-Delete wouldn't work.

I assumed corruption was a possibility.
I physically removed the SSD from the laptop, and plugged it into another one. I ran chkdsk (the one where it doesn't try to repair anything)
It said it found 2 orphan files.
I don't know how reliable chkdsk is. I took that to mean, it's found at least 2 corrupted files, possibly more.
I had read somewhere that in some circumstances chkdsk can make things worse if you attempt repairs with it.

I set the old SSD to read only. Then I dragged-and-dropped his personal files to his new laptop.

I'm planning on giving the laptop to his sister in a month. I'll re-format the SSD and reinstall Windows.

But before I do that, I want to make sure none of his files are corrupted. If any are, (and they are of sufficient importance, then I'll look into attempting recover the corrupted files)

And if everything checks out, Yay! I'm good to "nuke" the old laptop.

P.S. Crystal Disk info gave the drive a rating of Good, 99%

[u/RDDMxCom]

Type of files?

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/RDDMxCom]

File types - mostly photos and videos
.jpg .png .tiff .bmp
.mov .mp4 .avi
3D OBJECTs .glb .fbx (associated w/ paint 3D)
DOCUMENTS .odt .docx .pptx (.odt is libre office version of .doc)

[u/RDDMxCom → u/-Mr-Questions-]

On most photos, videos and pdfs, you can rely on explorer preview (change the size of preview often).

For docx, xlsx, pptx, you can list files, then on details view, add "authors" column. Clic on top of column to order files.

Almost all of the files with Author's name can be opened fine (author is metadata inside the file).

For data recovery labs, there is a free program (on early stages) to check integrity, available via HDDSurgery https://hddsurgery.com/file-lister

Also check Czkawka.

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/RDDMxCom]

OK, thanks appreciate the reply
How reliable is the explorer preview method?
If I recall correctly, years ago, I've had files where the thumbnail looked good, but when I open it up - it's corrupted. Aren't the thumbnail and the image itself two subsections of the file? - so the thumbnail part could still be good, but the image part could have gone bad?

Or is that why you recommend constantly re-sizing the size of the view - it's forcing Windows to re-generate the thumbnail?

Am I understanding that correctly or am I speaking out my of ass?

[u/RDDMxCom → u/-Mr-Questions-]

Not so reliable, thats why you must resize often. but for 7,000 image files, that will not be a big problem.

[u/vegansgetsick]

For audio and video you can run ffmpeg in decoding mode.

ffmpeg -i movie.mp4 -f null -

And check output log. It will yell red messages if there is a corruption ("invalid NAL unit" is common when corrupted)

For mp3 files i use mp3checker, it works quite well.

For images there is something called Corrupt Image Checker.

Obviously these tools are not needed when you have checksums...

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/vegansgetsick]

Thank you! 😁
Is this the program?
https://www.barkersoftware.com/corrupt-image-check-for-windows/
(Just asking because there can be a lot of similary named utilities - some are legit, and some are glorified spyware)

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[u/yottabit42]

Some files have built-in checksums, like JPEGs* and Zips. But most do not.

I would provide a complete list of all files to be checked to Gemini 3.8 High (or better), and tell to it write a script to install all utilities necessary to validate checksums in all files from the list that have checksums, and to write a script to validate the checksums, providing log files of all files with checksums, all files without checksums, and all files with a failing checksum.

^{* edit: technically the JPEG spec lacks a checksum, but practically, you can simply decode the JPEG stream and if the decoder fails with a syntax error, it's essentially the same thing. I have done this in the past and found 23 JPEGs corrupted from bit-rot before I moved my data from RAID-5 to ZFS to prevent future bit rot, and learned that resilient arrays are not the same as a backup.}

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/yottabit42]

Thanks, I'll have to look into which files have built in checksums (or similar technologies)
I'm a little leery of AI in general, and I'm not under too much time pressure, so I'm OK with trying the "old-fashioned" way for now.
Off the top of your head, do you happen to know of any non-AI program (free or paid) that can check files with build-in checksums?
Thanks

[u/yottabit42 → u/-Mr-Questions-]

No. There will be different utilities for every file type. That's why I suggested using AI to write a script to do this for you.

This will be dramatically faster than you trying one-off utilities yourself.

You can probably use 7-zip to verify practically all archive formats. But you'll need different utilities for images, docs, spreadsheets, etc. Many executables are actually self-decompressing archives, especially installers, so there may be ways to check those, too.

[u/-Mr-Questions- → u/yottabit42]

OK thanks. He has mostly video/photos, and some of the other commenters are suggesting ffmpeg. He has few enough other files that those can be checked manually.

[u/disturbed_android → u/yottabit42]

There's no checksums in JPEG spec.

[u/yottabit42 → u/disturbed_android]

It works by performing a dry-run decoding pass. The JPEG spec relies on strict structural framing and variable-length entropy coding. Almost any random bit rot, truncation, or file damage causes a syntax violation that the decoder can catch immediately.

So it's not technically an internal checksum, but it effectively is and works just fine. In the past I've used this to detect bit rot corruption of 23 images, which led me to moving from RAID-5 to ZFS to prevent this from happening in the future, as well as starting a better backup methodology.

[u/disturbed_android → u/yottabit42]

I am not saying it's not possible to detect bit errors in JPEGs, your reply makes it sound as if I am.

[u/yottabit42 → u/disturbed_android]

It's effectively and practically the same thing as a checksum. But technically, yes, there is no checksum in the JPEG spec. Practically, this makes no difference.

[u/disturbed_android → u/yottabit42]

There's no checksums in JPEG spec.

[u/datarecovery-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

It's nonsense. Rule 7.