>> good deal faster >> You could always try it and see :) >> Example test: openssl speed md5 sha256 When I was looking for a fast hash easily called from Pyt

>> good deal faster >> You could always try it and see :) >> Example test: openssl speed md5 sha256 When I was looking for a fast hash easily called from Python, I settled on adler32 (as the fastest) after some trial-and-error on my files. I don't now recall all the utilities/functions that I tried, but they certainly included md5, sha1, and crc32. I only needed to test for accidental corruption, and only computed the hashes if meta data matched.