zlacker

Can you not store the data in a proper format with error correction? Then you can reconstruct the original data completely as long as a certain percentage of data is still undamaged.

>>echoan+(OP)
If an HDD lost its magnetic information, what do you want to create the data from?

Sure you can probably correct file headers, but that's it. Anything that's relying on file integrity probably will go nowhere without a redundant backup to correct the data from.

I'm not talking about "good enough" == "some pixels are wrong in a jpeg file". I am talking about legally relevant documents where authenticity matters and a single bit flip might cause the court to not accept the documents as evidence.

>>thrwwy+qV
The post is referring to erasure coding or similar, which you can add to your files with a tool like PAR2.

You need to spread the files (including the redundancy codes) over enough disks that you expect to be able to access sufficient blocks in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive