When is CRC more appropriate to use than MD5/SHA1?

Question

When is it appropriate to use CRC for error detection versus more modern hashing functions such as MD5 or SHA1? Is the former easier to implement on embedded hardware?

Answer 1

CRC32 is faster and the hash is only 32bits long.

Use it when you just want a quick and light checksum. CRC is used in ethernet.

If you need more reliability it's preferable to use a modern hashing function.