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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

Windows

  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.

After installing

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

The welcome guide

The first time FileGriffon starts, it opens the dashboard in your browser once and shows a short welcome guide: what FileGriffon does, how vaults work, and where to find the tray icon and your trial status. It appears on first launch only, not after updates.

You can reopen it any time from Settings → About → Show welcome guide. Doing so won’t re-trigger the one-time browser auto-open.

Adding your first vault

  1. Open the dashboard and click Add Vault.
  2. Point it at a folder, or a whole drive (whole drives require Pro — on Free, pick a folder inside the drive instead).
  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

Windows

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.