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

[{'answer_id': 49182, 'author': 'Dale Ragan', 'author_id': 1117, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1117', 'pm_score': 5, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>Based on the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188362.aspx" rel="noreferrer">documentation on MSDN</a> and my experience, binary is better, since the md5 hash does not vary in size.</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 49057908, 'author': 'Dan', 'author_id': 866236, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/866236', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Null values change things: </p>\n\n<p>A null varbinary(16) is 2 bytes. <br />\nA null binary(16) is 16 bytes. <br />\n16 bytes stored in varbinary(16) takes 18 bytes. <br />\n16 bytes in binary(16) takes 16 bytes. <br /></p>\n\n<p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/3731195">https://stackoverflow.com/a/3731195</a></p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/49138', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2281/']