Copying Data using MHL
Transferring recorded material from the original media should never be done using a simple file copy. There are different software and hardware solutions available that will copy a file to one or several destinations and perform a checksum calculation, comparing the material on the original media to the copies, to provide a minimum-effort safety check of data integrity. We strongly recommend using copy software and tools with checksum calculation and verification. Checksum files should be calculated and generated as sidecar files at the first copy process.
There are many different types of checksums, all for the same purpose: safe and fast copying. For example, there’s a checksum file called MHL (Media Hash List). The structure of the file is fixed. It’s an XML-based file which always contains the following information:
- creator info
- name
- user name
- host name
- tool
- start date
- finishing date
- hash
- path to file
- file size in bytes
- last modification of the file
- xxhash (calculated)
- hash date