Hexdump

Simply because the default data dump, which is typically available as hexadecimal content, may seem irrelevant, it does not mean that it does not contain valuable information. In fact, there are numerous tools out there that enable you to convert the content to a more familiar character set, such as ASCII for instance.

Hexdump is a tiny command line tool that provides a simple solution of printing the contents of files in hexadecimal and ASCII format side by side. Before you can use the tool for your personal or work projects, the developer recommends that you move the tool to Program Files and add the PATH environment variable: %ProgramFiles%\Hexdump\bin. If everything was done correctly, you should be able to use the hexdump <file> command and obtain a table with the hex data on the left and the ASCII content on the right.

The obvious advantage of the tool is that you get to view the ASCII content to the right and hence, are able to pick up some useful information, like the file format or the date and time the file was created, for example. The tool comes with a limitation though, namely that it allows a maximum file size of a little over 4GB.