Like a lot of you on this form I have a large archive of photos from over the years. Awhile back I had a program that I would run a few times a year to check for data corruption in my photo archives. (Never had an issue) That program is no longer supported in the current MacOS. After searching and talking with chatGPT I don see much out there. I am wondering if it is even necessary. I do have multiply backups, but if there is corruption on the main archive it just get duplicated to the backups.
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Anyone using software to scan their photo archives for bit rot or data corruption.
- Thread starter dimme
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how would files get corrupted? if the segment of the drive they're on gets corrupted, right? or the entire drive? or do I miss something.
so checking the actual drive for corruption should do imho.
How do you backup? do you override old backups frequently? I use CCC and it backs up changed files only, having said that, if a file were corrupted - is the actual file corrupted or the directory entry with the pointer to the actual location on the drive? hmmh
I'm not shooting professionally so only have ~ 1.25TB or so of photos, all on my internal SSD of 4 TB. Backup onto another 4 TB SSD every night, backup to 3 different HDDs on a regular basis. I like to recycle those HDDs every 3 years or so, don't trust them for longer.
I have never had a SSD fail on me, neither die nor corruption etc, HDDs, yes those are more problematic imho.
The OP is referring to bit rot, where some bits can get flipped from their intended state over time (0 to 1 or 1 to 0). It can happen to all kinds of storage media. Sometimes it may go unnoticed (i.e. the photo still looks fine, but some pixels have the wrong color); or if certain bits get flipped, it can make the whole file unreadable. If you copy a file that has been affected (i.e. restoring the file, or copying it to new drive for long term storage), you just end up copying the bad bits without knowing it.
Checking the drive for corruption does not detect bit rot because the bits/sectors are working fine...they just have the wrong state, nor do these types of scans know what each bit should be. You need to check the files against their original checksum (hash) to scan for bit rot.
While it is relatively rare to happen, I would say so, especially if these are archived files for longer-term storage (i.e. no longer on your computer and part of your regular/more frequent backups). Better safe than sorry. You could consider using a NAS; they usually handle this automatically. That is what I use for my primary backups and has made it much easier for me to manage, and gives me peace of mind that it's checking my data integrity frequently.