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Getting Started

What FileGriffon does

FileGriffon watches folders and drives you care about and tells you when a file has silently gone bad. Storage media doesn’t always fail loudly — bit rot, failing sectors, and accidental deletes or moves can corrupt or lose files without you noticing until it’s too late. FileGriffon:

  1. Walks your files and computes a fast, collision-resistant hash (XXH3-64) for each one.
  2. Re-checks those hashes on every scan to detect corruption (content changed unexpectedly), missing files (gone from where they were), and moved/renamed files (matched elsewhere in the same scan by size + hash, so they aren’t flagged as false “missing” + “new” pairs).
  3. Optionally builds PAR2 parity data so corrupted or missing files can actually be repaired, not just detected.

Everything runs locally — your file list and hashes stay in a local database, never uploaded anywhere (see Security & Encryption).

Installing FileGriffon

  1. Download the FileGriffon Setup installer from filegriffon.com.
  2. Run it and follow the prompts (optionally enable “Start with Windows” during setup — you can change this later in Settings → General).
  3. Once installed, FileGriffon starts as a background daemon with a system tray icon and opens the dashboard: http://127.0.0.1:8080/

Closing the browser tab does not stop scanning — closing the tray icon does.

There is no separate config file — everything is configured from the dashboard.

Adding your first vault

  1. Open the dashboard and click Add Vault.
  2. Point it at a folder, or a whole drive.
  3. Leave scan settings on defaults for now — you can tune scan size and schedule later (see Vaults).
  4. Run a scan. The first scan is the slowest — every file needs a full hash the first time. Subsequent scans are much faster since most files haven’t changed.

The Free tier allows one active vault. See Licensing & Trial for what unlocks more.

Uninstalling FileGriffon

Uninstall through Windows’ normal “Apps & features” / Control Panel like any other program. This removes FileGriffon’s program files, Start Menu and desktop shortcuts, and the “Start with Windows” registry entry.

Your data — the database, scan history, and parity files under C:/ProgramData/FileGriffon — is not deleted automatically. Partway through uninstalling, you’ll be asked separately whether to also delete this data; the default answer is No (keep it), so an accidental uninstall doesn’t wipe your scan history and parity data. Choose Yes only if you want a completely clean removal.

If FileGriffon is still running (tray icon present) when you start the uninstaller, you’ll be prompted to close it first.

Moving to a new machine instead of uninstalling for good? See Migrating to a New Machine — don’t just uninstall and reinstall, or you’ll lose the ability to compare hashes against your existing history.