What steps will reproduce the problem? As described in http://git-annex.branchable.com/backends/#comment-3c1cd45d2a015b4fc412dd813293ad7d , sha512 is faster. On my 64-bit system, the speed difference is about 1.5times. What is the expected output? What do you see instead? What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system? Please provide any additional information below. > You are free to change the default in your own annexes. This is very easy > to do: `echo '* annex.backend=SHA512E' > .gitattributes` > > I don't anticipate moving to SHA512, because > > 1. It makes `ls -l` really ugly. Each symlink takes like 4 lines > on an 80 column terminal. > 2. There are better hashes coming. Particularly SHA3. That should be > faster and/or more secure. And without adding so much length to the > hash. > > --[[Joey]]