The present invention comprises apparatus, methods and articles of manufacture for transferring data, comprising one or more update files made available upon distribution media, such as a server, a hash of the update files made available upon the server, as well as versions of the update and hash files upon a target or client. The distribution media then transmits the hash to the target or client, the hashes are compared, and, if they do not match, the update files are downloaded for further review and updating, if desired. If updating is desired, an update mechanism will then edit and/or replace files, modules, data and/or byte sequences on the target, according to the preferred embodiments. Embodiments for various platforms, including Unix.RTM. and Windows.RTM. NT are disclosed.