To allow Fixity Pro to email integrity check results, we must provide a connection to an email account. Once your free trial has expired you will need to take out a monthly or annual subscription to continue use. You will require an activation code to finish the installation process and this will be emailed separately. Double-click on the downloaded file and follow the instructions to install. Clicking the link in the email will take you to a page where you can download Fixity Pro. You will then receive an email to confirm your registration. When you click on the “Register & Download” button, you will be asked to provide your name, organization, and email. You can also access the User Guide and other supporting resources from this page. Downloading and Installing Fixity ProĪ 30-day free trial of Fixity Pro can be downloaded from the AVP website. This table is from the Fixity Pro User Manual. The table on the left shows the four criteria that Fixity Pro checks and how it decides the status of each file according to these categories. Outcomes of an Integrity Check with Fixity Proįor each file it checks, Fixity Pro will report if the file is “confirmed” (the same), “changed” (the file contents), “new”, “removed” (deleted), and “moved and/or renamed”. Once set up, the tool will continue to carry-out the checks as scheduled until the project is removed. The results are stored in two files, a manifest which lists the files and their checksums, and a report on the outcomes of the integrity check. The tool then carries out the integrity checks automatically as scheduled and both saves the results in a nominated folder and emails them to addresses that have been added to the project. Also, although Fixity Pro does scale up reasonably well, if you are scheduling a check on a large collection you may wish to set this for a time the computer is not used for other work. Unless content is at high risk, monthly checks will likely be enough for most content. Checks can be scheduled daily, weekly, or monthly. In each project one or more folders are added and integrity checks are scheduled at regular intervals to monitor the integrity of the files in over time. The process of integrity checking with Fixity Pro revolves around the creation of “projects”. Also, we must be able to link the tool to an email account, which might be difficult for those at organizations with strict controls on their systems. The most important of which is that is only offers a choice of two checksums types, although they are two of the most popular, MD5 and SHA-256. Fixity Pro also automatically saves the results of the process in easy to interpret reports which it can email to you.įixity Pro does, however, have a few limitations. Once set-up correctly, Fixity Pro will carry out regular integrity checks and staff will only need to intervene in the process if an error is identified. The most important benefit of using Fixity Pro is that it allows for the scheduled automation of integrity checking. It, therefore, offers additional functionality to help with digital preservation tasks that other tools do not. Why Use Fixity Pro?Īs mentioned above, Fixity Pro was developed with digital preservation processes in mind. This version is still downloadable from the AVG website but technical support is no longer available. Also, unlike some other tools, Fixity Pro is available for both Windows and Mac.įixity Pro not the first version of the tool, an earlier version known as simply “Fixity” has been available for free for a number of years. There is also a full user guide available, and AVP maintains a user group forum to provide information and support. Fixity Pro can be downloaded on AVP’s website and there is a small monthly subscription cost (reduced for those who pay annually). Unlike some other integrity checking tools, it was developed specifically for the Digital Preservation community, with common processes/workflows in mind. So, time to answer the first question: What is Fixity Pro? What is Fixity Pro?įixity Pro is an integrity checking tool developed and maintained by an organization called AVP. Finally, we will examine the results that Fixity Pro produces, and how we can use this information. We will then cover how the tool works, and downloading and installing it, before going step by step through setting it up for integrity checking. We will start with an introduction to the tool and why it is useful. On this page we will be looking at how to use an integrity checking tool called Fixity Pro.
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