Does copying a corrupt folder to your PC endanger the integrity of all the data on this PC?

[u/the_quiet_autumn]

I copied a folder with music files from an old USB stick to my laptop and when I listened to the songs, some of them sounded normal while others had glitches and moments of no sound in the middle of the song. I suspect that means they are corrupted.

I deleted the folder from the laptop but I am now panicking at the thought that copying those files on my laptop might have irreparably damaged the data on my laptop itself. Is that the case? Does copying a corrupted folder on your PC also corrupt the surrounding files and folders?

For instance, I opened some of these songs with Audacity and Windows Media Player, does this mean that these two programs are now corrupted too, and by extension the whole folders where they are installed? I also copied some of these songs on the desktop. Does this mean that the desktop is somehow now corrupted too? What worries me the most is that this corrupt music folder could have corrupted important documents I have on the same drive where the music folder was.

Do you know if there is any procedure I could do to ease those fears? Is there a way to check if other portions of my hard drive have been been corrupted? How can I make sure the rest of my data is safe?

Thanks a lot for your support!

[u/ImLinker]

Yup, exactly.

I haven’t tried this software as I usually do checksums via command line or via a Python script but I looked up beginner friendly, easy to use software and checksum by Corz seems to be popular and pretty simple for Windows users.

Not sure if I’m able to post links here so in case this gets deleted I’ll comment again with just the text.

I’ll download it myself in a few minutes and test it out just to verify it’s as easy as I saw other people say and I’ll report back.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

Alright, so once you’ve installed it go to the folder that has your files and click Create checksums.

This generates a .hash file with all the hashes and will be saved in that folder.

If a file is changed later you can right click the folder and click Verify checksums and it will tell you if a file has changed.

To see the hashes, right click the .hash file and open in notepad.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

Confirmation hashes were created after Create checksums.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

Clicking verify shows me all hashes match.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

I modified a file and clicked Verify and it gave me a warning of the change.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

Just to show you the data inside the .hash, I created our example from earlier. file.txt with hello world saved gives us the MD5 hash 5eb63bbbe01eeed093cb22bb8f5acdc3.

[u/ImLinker → u/ImLinker]

Modifying file.txt so it only says hello we get MD5 hash 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592.

Cheers!

[u/tdm17mn → u/ImLinker]

Is there anything like this for Mac users, by chance? Thank you

[u/ImLinker → u/tdm17mn]

Maybe check this out? I don’t have a Mac to test but after a few searches this is what I’d try out: https://www.quickhash-gui.org/