Update: I'm running md5deep on the full sws8 directory tonight. It's running faster than I thought it would.
Doing this will allow me to verify that the files on my HDD (after the HDD->HDD transfer) are identical to the ones on poita's HDD.
I will also include the file with the Usenet upload so that downloaders can check the files they've downloaded. This is much better than the CRC32 you get with, e.g., SFV.