When doctors scramble up, damage, or lose pages within a folder, it makes a patient’s records unreadable. When a file becomes corrupted, it’s akin to a damaged folder in the example above. In case you’re wondering yes, this is what makes up binary code! What Is a Corrupted File? Hard drives store data as magnetized or demagnetized areas, which represent a 1 or a 0 respectively. While a hard drive isn’t a filing cabinet, it does store information and data like one. In an absolute worst-case scenario, vandals or natural disasters can destroy entire cabinets!.A drawer may jam up, so every patient with names between J-L can’t have their records accessed.A patient called Tony Smith may have their details jumbled up with another patient with the same name, so Tony Smith’s folder contains the records of two unrelated people.If he does remember, the folder may return with all the pages in an incorrect order. A doctor can take a folder home to study it, only to forget to bring it back.A doctor may fill out a prescription form wrong and put incorrect information into a folder.When transferring a file from one hospital to another, some papers could go missing from folders.

As people remove and replace folders, the individual papers inside are replaced out of order, damaged, or even lost altogether.

From this, you can imagine how information can be scrambled using this system. This hospital is particularly busy, so drawers are continually opened and closed, and folders are being extracted and put back. Every patient has a folder with all of their personal information within it, and every folder has a set place in a drawer that covers names in a specific range. Imagine you work in a hospital which uses filing cabinets to store patient details. Let’s break down data corruption and how you can avoid losing your data.

But what is data corruption exactly, and how can you fix your files if things go wrong? When someone discusses preserving sensitive data, you’ll probably hear the term “data corruption” used a few times.

How to fix a corrupted hard drive