How many random elements before MD5 produces collisions?

Question

I\'ve got an image library on Amazon S3. For each image, I md5 the source URL on my server plus a timestamp to get a unique filename. Since S3 can\'t have subdirectories, I

Answer 1

Probability of just two hashes accidentally colliding is 1/2¹²⁸ which is 1 in 340 undecillion 282 decillion 366 nonillion 920 octillion 938 septillion 463 sextillion 463 quintillion 374 quadrillion 607 trillion 431 billion 768 million 211 thousand 456.

However if you keep all the hashes then the probability is a bit higher thanks to birthday paradox. To have a 50% chance of any hash colliding with any other hash you need 2⁶⁴ hashes. This means that to get a collision, on average, you'll need to hash 6 billion files per second for 100 years.