Keeping Your Links Safe From Deletion: Creating Recovery Record

[hovhaness]

Keeping Your Links Safe From Deletion Creating Recovery Record

This will take a few minutes of your time to read, but I guarantee it will be well
worth your time.
Practice a few of these things, especially if you share music & or movies,
& you will have files that will remain on servers for a long time. Regardless of how popular they may be.

When you upload a file to the file server, a “digital fingerprint” is stored for your
file. This is often referred to as a “checksum”.
They add up all the tiny little 1’s and 0’s in your file and come up with a total.
Since that total wouldn’t by itself necessarily guarantee a unique value to
distinguish one file from another, they might then calculate a second or third
checksum using some other method (such as adding up the 1’s and 0’s that are
found only in every OTHER bit of your file, or in every SEVENTH bit of your file, etc.)

Eventually, they arrive at a unique digital fingerprint that clearly identifies your file
and which cannot be confused with any other file.
A term that you may have seen in relation to checksums.
If you use WinRar it displays these values as “CRC” or “CRC-32. That stands for
“Cyclic Redundancy Check”.

So now let’s say you’ve uploaded your files, and each of them has its own special
unique checksum value.
Next, someone else out there uploads the exact same file to the same server.
A few calculations are performed and their file matches the checksum/CRC value
that yours has.
Like any good business, they recognize an opportunity to save money.
Instead of storing a second copy of the same file, a unique link for this second
person to use is generated.
However this new link goes to the data that was uploaded onto the server by you.
This way, when the new Lady Gaga cd or a hot new movie leaks out to the Internet
and 50,000 people all upload a copy of it to various servers, there aren't
50,000 duplicate copies of the same thing.
One Copy is kept on each server, but 50,000 unique links point to the same data.
Links are cheap — server space is not.
What happens if even one of those links gets reported?
As you might suspect, it’s not just the one offensive link that gets disabled, its ALL
50,000 links.
Poof! In one fell swoop, all 50,000 links are wiped out, even though only one of
those 50,000 links was actually reported.
What this means is that your own personal links can be deleted even if no one
specifically reported them as a violation of terms.
If you attempt to re-upload those links the same way again.
They will get deleted again.
The way around this is to create archives that are uniquely yours in size.
Links that don't add up to the same values that others loaded to the servers do.
Give it a different checksum & you can load it up again safely.
Now onto the ways of doing this.

Basic

1. Add a picture file or text file & zip it.
This changes the size.
BTW this is why you will see archives like this.
Sometimes it is to promote a site, but it is also to help make the file unique.

Less basic

2. Use Winrar to create an archive. I say winrar because with this you can create
what is called a recovery record.
Recovery records are great because no matter how good your internet connection
may be when you download or upload files, they must stream the information.
Sometimes during this stream there can be an interruption that creates corruption.
This is why sometimes videos play terribly or games don't quite play right.
There is missing information.
Keep in mind too that the larger the file, the more of a chance there is that this will happen.
1GB sized files are great for convenience, but can be troublesome sometimes.
Under 500mb is usually good.

As an uploader you can account for any streaming errors & lost information by using a recovery record.
Recovery record also adds information to the file, thus making it larger & giving it a
unique checksum.

While doing this it also helps the downloader, because if the downloader has a
corrupted file through the download stream.
It can now be repaired.
Here is how it is done.

To archive

Step 1 - Check in put recovery record & test archived files. This way you know that
the zip or archive was error free before upload.
Set Compression to fastest.
Step 2 - Click advanced tab & then set recovery record between 3-6% then click OK.

Note: You may also set a password here if you like as the set password button is right below the recovery record area.
In this password area check in the box that says encrypt file names & then nobody can even peek without a password

Follow the screens in order from the top to below & forget that one says first & the other second.





To Repair Corrupted archives

You go to open the archive & then Run into this happy message



Step 1 - Open Archive



Step 2



Step 3



If you don't see a repair button on your version it is listed under tools (repair archive)

If a recovery record has been added the archive will be repaired.
If not then it won't.
If you have a multi-part archive this works as well.
Now you have an archive you can feel confident about putting out there.
It will stay safe on the server & if ever there is a complaint of a corrupted file,
you know it can be repaired & how it can be.