PAR Files
Par files are super cool. It's claim to fame was in the USENET groups, where, within months it ended the countless requests for partial reposts of multi-part archives, like big RAR files.
Besides the USENET uses, you could use par files to add some safety to your personal collections of files such as photos (.jpg, .gif, etc.). I.e. you could create a set of 20 par files for 400 or so photos on a CD. If your CD gets a minor scratch, you will possibly be able to recover all the lost images - well worth it if you value your photos. This is the theory, I've yet to find a convenient par or par2 encoder that can handle subdirectories!
Some link(s):
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Description of PAR files and SmartPar .par maker and decoder. http://www.slyck.com/ng.php?page=6
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This looks like a big hub of all PAR activity:
http://parchive.sourceforge.net/. Links to a few clients for Windows, DOS, Linux, et al.
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PAR isn't dead! https://multipar.eu/
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Hmm. Perhaps pars aren't the best system for archiving photos on CD's:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=2464067&forum_id=1147
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A slashdot thread in which I mentioned PAR2's for data protection -- a few replies came with similar software that is available:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/2230211&tid=198
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Unfortunately, I need to have sub directory support for my reed-solomon backups of my digital photos. I still can not find a good par2 client that supports subdirectories (even though it's in the original file format specs) so for the time being, I think I'm going to try ICE ECC: http://ice-graphics.com/ICEECC/IndexE.html
Tags: par2, par, parity, !ICCEE, !ICE