Parchive
Parchive (or Parity archive) is redundant file format, which provides a way to apply data-recovery capability concepts of RAID-like systems, via Reed-Solomon code to the posting and recovery of files. Historically, these were multi-part archives that was distributed in Usenet (a.k.a., "network news"), but can still be used in prevention of complete data loss during transit or storage. Parchive is like RAID for files instead of a whole file system.
The technology is based on a 'Reed-Solomon Code' implementation that allows for recovery of any 'X' real data-blocks for 'X' parity data-blocks present. (Data-blocks referring to files OR much smaller virtual slices of files).[2]
Contents |
Identification
A PAR2 file begins with bytes 50 41 52 32 00 50 4b 54
Examples
Create uniformed recovery file sizes with 100% redundancy for example.dwarfs
par2 create -u -r100 example.dwarfs
Sample files
See Search results with par2 extensions and are likely parity archive - Discmaster.textfiles.com for samples.
These files are usually distributed in a set, containing <name>.par2 and <name>.vol<numA>+<numB>.par2, where name is the name of the file, typically to be created as a parity archive of, and <num> is an incrementing number, and is often starts with 0 for <numA>.
Software
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
