Data corruption is an insidious problem in storage. While there are many
forms of corruption, there are also many ways to prevent them. For example,
enterprise class servers use error checking and correcting caches and memory
to protect against single and double bit errors. System buses have similar
protective measures such as parity. Communications going over the network are
protected by checksums.
On the storage side many installations employ RAID (Redundant Array of
Inexpensive Disk) technology to protect against disk failure. In the case of
hardware RAID, the array firmware will often use advanced checksumming
techniques and media scrubbing to detect and potentially correct errors. The
disk drives also feature sophisticated error corrective measures, and storage
protocols such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI feature a Cyclic Redundancy Check
(CRC) that guards against... (more)