In 1961, the American mathematician William Wesley Peterson developed cyclic redundancy checking (CRC) to reduce errors occurring when transmitting and storing data. In this procedure, redundancies are added to each data block in the form of an additional test value. This value, also known as the CRC value, makes it possible to detect errors that have occurred during transmission and storage and would ideally correct them automatically.
If the cyclic redundancy check encounters at least one problematic file, a CRC error may occur that prevents the scheduled data storage or transfer from being executed. This can occur especially when downloading and extracting compressed files and archives. However, it can also happen when reading and writing data to hard disks. In this article, we’ll discuss what a CRC error is and how to resolve the problem.
A CRC error informs you that the cyclic redundancy check has detected damaged or incomplete files. In that case, the matched value of the data and the attached CRC value do not match, resulting in an aborted action (save, copy, read access, etc.) and a corresponding CRC error message. Typically, this message is as follows:
Data error (cyclic redundancy check)The CRC error often occurs when extracting compressed files and archives. A failed cyclic redundancy check may also happen when reading and writing to local and external hard disks or USB sticks as well as CDs, DVDs or Blu-rays.
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If you encounter a CRC error, it can be really annoying. Your go-to solutions such as rebooting the system won’t help solve a CRC error. You can’t temporarily disable the checking procedure either, which is why theaffected files seem lost at first. However, depending on the context, there are different strategies to solve the problem and save your files!
If you want to extract compressed files, you can use the tools installed on your operating system. Many users do opt for third-party tools such as WinZip or WinRAR for packing and extracting documents, however, which often have a much greater range of functions. If you use this kind of software yourself, you should first check whether it is still up to date when your CRC error occurs. If you have updated the program and the error persists, try to reinstall it entirely. A change of program can also be the answer to your CRC problem.
Even an incomplete or incorrectly executed download can quickly lead to problems like a CRC error. If you have downloaded the corrupted file or archive from the Internet, we recommend that you download it again.
Many third-party tools can repair damaged archives or compressed files. If your program offers this option, you can try to fix the CRC error this way in the last step. For example, in WinRAR, you can start the repair as follows:
If a compressed file can no longer be extracted due to a CRC error, often most of the data is fine, and only a few files are corrupted. You could save the uncorrupted files even if you can’t fix the CRC error entirely. As an example, the following instructions show how this procedure works in WinRAR:
Because there is no specific troubleshooting for storage media errors, tools for general error checking of the affected media have the best chance of success. As with WinRAR, you can choose between third-party software (usually for a fee) and tools that are already integrated in your system. In Windows operating systems, the tool can be found under “error checking”. This comes preinstalled. It can be used in the following way for data problems, such as a CRC error:
Problems with extraction or reading and writing of files are particularly serious if the files are required urgently. The fundamental question is whether it is possible to prevent errors resulting from the cyclic redundancy check in the first place. However, there is no proper answer in this case, unfortunately. Files or archives can be damaged at any time. However, you can make an effort to keep software for handling files up to date by regularly checking for available updates and installing them.
In addition, you can generally minimize the risk of hardware problems by always shutting down your device properly and disconnecting external hard drives and USB sticks using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature.
Sellers of e-books and other electronic publications face the same problem as the creators and copyright owners of films, music and software – because the content is digital, it is easy to reproduce and redistribute. To prevent this, commercial ePUBs, PDFs and other files are copy-protected, for example using Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is where ACSM files come into play.
If you want to send large files as an e-mail attachment, you have to compress them first. Zipped in small, handy containers, these packed files are not unzipped until they reach their destination. Besides the well-known WinRAR, there are a few other alternatives worth checking out for zipping and unzipping files. We’ll show you the advantages and disadvantages of the best WinRAR alternatives here....
Usually, users have little reason to engage with the file system on their computer. However, it’s worth having an understanding of the topic, because hardware performance, data security, and compatibility with other devices and network-based data exchange depend on file systems.
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