The process of files getting corrupted due to some hardware or software failure is known as data corruption and this is one of the main problems which Internet hosting companies face because the larger a hard disk is and the more data is filed on it, the much more likely it is for data to be corrupted. There are several fail-safes, but often the information gets damaged silently, so neither the particular file system, nor the admins notice a thing. Thus, a bad file will be handled as a regular one and if the hard disk is a part of a RAID, the file will be duplicated on all other drives. In principle, this is done for redundancy, but in practice the damage will get worse. When a given file gets damaged, it will be partly or entirely unreadable, therefore a text file will no longer be readable, an image file will present a random blend of colors if it opens at all and an archive shall be impossible to unpack, so you risk sacrificing your site content. Although the most widely used server file systems feature various checks, they often fail to find some problem early enough or require an extensive time period to check all of the files and the web hosting server will not be functional in the meantime.
No Data Corruption & Data Integrity in Shared Web Hosting
We've tackled the problem of silent data corruption on all of our shared web hosting servers by using the amazing Z file system, or ZFS. The latter is superior to other file systems as it is the only one in existence which checks all of the files in real time by employing a checksum - a digital identifier that is unique for each file. When you upload content to your account, it'll be stored on several SSD drives and regularly synced between them for redundancy. ZFS constantly analyzes the checksum of all files and in case any file is detected as corrupted, it is replaced instantly with a good copy from another disk. As this happens in real time, there's no risk that a corrupted file may remain or may be duplicated on the other SSDs. ZFS requires a lot of physical memory in order to carry out the real-time checks and the advantage of our cloud hosting platform is that we use multiple very powerful servers working together. In case you host your sites with us, your information will be undamaged no matter what.
No Data Corruption & Data Integrity in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you obtain one of our semi-dedicated hosting solutions, you will not have to worry about silent file corruption as we use ZFS - a high level file system that monitors all files in real time. Every time you upload a file to your hosting account, ZFS will assign a unique digital fingerprint to it - the so-called checksum. The file will be synchronized between a number of SSD drives for redundancy, so if a drive fails, the other ones will take over. ZFS compares the checksum of all the copies on the different drives and if it detects a damaged copy, it replaces it with a healthy one from a different drive. This is done instantly, so there will be no risk for any part of your content at any moment. In comparison, other file systems perform checks only after a system malfunction, but since they don't use anything similar to the checksums which ZFS uses, they will not detect silently corrupted files, so a bad copy can be replicated on the rest of the drives as well and you can lose important information. Since this is not the case with ZFS, we're able to guarantee the integrity of each and every file you upload no matter what.