yes, you hit the nail on the head i do believe checking the std dev for 0x00 - 0xFF byte characters. and this along with fore-mentioned, calculating entropy, checking percentage of how many times each byte shows up in a file ect, will help to determine (within a reasonable consideration) if the file is corrupt or not. tho this is not a 100% accurate way of telling though, but i think it is a good way to help, and is exactly what i am after. i am going to read up on standard deviation and try to script up something that will compute it per each of my files. i hope i get expected results

also, thank everyone for their time and input :)

ps also thanks for helping me figure out what my question should have been too. i really need to start taking the extra few mins to think about my question before i post. apologies