Whitepaper: Troubleshooting corrupted data

As providers of software solutions that make flash data storage reliable in embedded systems, we are often the first line of defense for our customers who experience a data-related failure of their systems in the field. Over the years, we have developed considerable expertise and special-purpose tools to help diagnose all kinds of data issues. If customers can’t provide a reproducible case causing data corruption, it is very difficult to get the attention of most vendors. How often have you heard, “Come back to us when you have a reproducible case”?

Our approach is to first determine what’s wrong, then to try to identify the steps it would take to get the system to this state. Is it something that the software could have caused? Did the media fail or is it perhaps something completely different? This paper, by Thom Denholm, examines how such questions are answered, and describes file system-related troubleshooting techniques.