Storing MD5 Hash in SQL Server

Question

In Sql Server would a varbinary(16) be the most efficient way of storing an MD5 hash? Won't be doing anything with it except returning it in a linq query.

Answer 1

Based on the documentation on MSDN and my experience, binary is better, since the md5 hash does not vary in size.

The size for a binary data type is n bytes, so the size of the data. The size of a varbinary data type is n bytes + 2 bytes on top of the size of the data.