How to Check the MD5 Checksum of Files on Google Drive
If you upload or download files from Google Drive, you may want to verify that they are not corrupted or modified during the process. One way to do that is to compare the MD5 checksum of the files before and after the transfer. MD5 is a cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit (32 characters) output for any input. If two files have the same MD5 checksum, they are likely identical.
In this article, we will show you how to check the MD5 checksum of files on Google Drive using a simple method that does not require any programming skills. You will need a Google account and access to the Google Drive API v3.
Step 1: Enable the Google Drive API
The first step is to enable the Google Drive API for your account. This will allow you to access the metadata of your files, including the MD5 checksum. To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library/drive.googleapis.com and sign in with your Google account.
- If you don’t have a project yet, create one by clicking on the “Create Project” button at the top.
- Give your project a name and click on “Create”.
- On the next page, click on “Enable” to activate the Google Drive API for your project.
Step 2: Get an Access Token
The next step is to get an access token that will authorize your requests to the Google Drive API. To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to https://developers.google.com/oauthplayground and sign in with your Google account.
- On the left panel, expand “Drive API v3” and select “https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.metadata.readonly”. This will request read-only access to your file metadata.
- Click on “Authorize APIs” and then “Allow” to grant permission.
- On the right panel, click on “Exchange authorization code for tokens” and copy the value of the “Access token” field.
Step 3: Make a Request to the Google Drive API
The final step is to make a request to the Google Drive API using your access token and get the MD5 checksum of your files. To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/reference/files/list and scroll down to the “Try this API” section.
- Paste your access token into the “Authorization” field and click on “Execute”. This will list all your files on Google Drive along with their metadata.
- In the response body, look for the fields “md5Checksum” and “name” for each file. The md5Checksum is the MD5 hash of the file content and the name is the file name.
- You can compare the md5Checksum values with those of your local files or other sources using a tool like https://www.winmd5.com/.
Conclusion
In this article, we showed you how to check the MD5 checksum of files on Google Drive using a simple method that does not require any programming skills. This can help you verify that your files are not corrupted or modified during upload or download. You can also use this method to check other file metadata such as size, type, or creation date.