Cleverly Repair Large Corrupted Files with BitTorrent Client Checksum Hash Scans
I admit, I have a very fast broadband connection at home. My link speed is more than 6 Mbps. You’d think I can’t complain. But there are some files that seem to download for an eternity. Take, for instance, the Windows Vista Beta. On my connection, that 4 GB bloatware *.ISO mammoth took about two hours to download. Even, when I used DownThemAll!, it took about an hour and a half! That is way too much time to spend for downloading.
Corrupted *.ISO Image File
When I was writing one of my most recent articles on free T-Mobile Hotspots and Microsoft Windows Beta virtualization, I needed a copy of Windows Vista Beta. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to another 2-hour wait of download time. So, I checked my stack of burned CDs and DVDs for an old copy. To my good luck, I found the original copy of Vista. I just had to rip it to my hard drive for faster virtualization. Unfortunately, there were about 5 unrecoverable disk sector read errors. “Maybe,” I rationalized, “Vista won’t really care if there are just a couple of corrupted data bytes. Besides, I just need it for one small task.” I was wrong. The Windows Vista installation program actually performs a corruption test to make sure everything is set before actually proceeding with the installation.
To think that 4 tiny sectors in the DVD hampered my schemes of exploiting T-Mobile! Would I have to redownload the ISO image online to continue with my plans? No! Fortunately, I found a forum thread from Locker Gnome (bless Chris Pirillo) that helped deal with corrupted Vista ISO image error 80070241 code. The solution was simply ingenious!
BitTorrent Checksum Hash Scans
To repair large corrupted files, you have to understand how hash scans and torrents work. A *.torrent file contains two important pieces of information, the torrent tracker address and the hash key. The address of the torrent tracker contains all the IP addresses that have pieces of the desired file. The torrent client downloads data segments of the desired file from different IP addresses referred to by the tracker. Depending on the size of the desired file (in my case 4 GB), there can be hundreds of file segments to download. After each segment is downloaded, the torrent client uses the hash key to validate the data so each file segment is exactly the same as the one in the original file. This ensures that any corrupted data, dummy data, or malicious data isn’t mixed into the final product.
Repair Files with the Checksum
This hash check occurs several times in a torrent client but the most important time, in this case, is when the program starts up. Before clients begin to download, upload, or seed a torrent, the programs do a complete hash check of the data already downloaded and available. With large corrupted files, you can take advantage of this hash check.
- Just find a torrent of the exact file in The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, or TorrentSpy and download it for about a minute.
- Then, stop and close the client.
- Replace the torrent data file with the corrupted file.
- Reopen the client and start the download. The client will perform a hash MD5 check on the current data to see what file segment downloads are necessary. If you correctly found a torrent of the exact file, the client will redownload the segment of the corrupted data and rebuild the file. In the end, you should be good to go!
Cons
There are a couple of caveats for using this method to repair corrupted files.
- It’s kinda shady. Depending on the file, legality of torrenting may be questionable.
- You have to find a torrent of the exact file.
- The torrent tracker must have some IP addresses participating. You may find the torrent of the exact file but that torrent may also be dead.
Leave a comment on your experience with this method or post any other suggestions!
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October 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Just thought I\’d mention my rather awesome experience with this trick. Three years or ago, I\’d downloaded the Doom 3 demo while at university, knowing that my punily-spec\’d laptop wouldn\’t manage it. But I was going home for the weekend where my far beefier desktop resided. So I pulled all the music off my 1GB (spinning disk) mp3 player and shoved it on. When I got home I copied it to the Windows desktop and was horrified to find that corruption errors stopped it from unpacking. (Quite predictable, given the medium). So I found another torrent, lazily saved it to the desktop too, and watched in amazement as it jumped to 99% and completed within a few seconds.
February 11th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
yes this is a very awesome trick to recover say, a couple files in a huge collection of a torrent. really cool stuff.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Torrenting a file you have already legally downloaded should be legal – the torrenting technology itself is legal, it’s only when you download content without the authors’ permission that it becomes illegal.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:10 am
i am interest each & every recovery files, folder and other useful software, please send the detial at the earliest
November 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Ingenious and pefectly valid procedure. BT downloads vs. direct downloads are preferable for this very reason. MD5 or any other checksum is irrelevant if the filed has been DLed via BT.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:21 am
wincrc, or
filerepair, (http://filerepair.sourceforge.net/) or
par2, or
winrar, recovery record.(2-10%)
winrar, recovery volume (rev)
bittorrent is great.
but filerepair would be greater if it had more features, integrating a recovery record, or using MD5/CRC to reconstruct file-blocks.
msg me at ICQ:593407940
April 15th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
TY so much u helped a stoner put down the mouse and pick the bong back up ty ty ty ty
im hopeless at computers and didnt wana download 8 gigs again this way i only had to download 50 kbs
tytytytyty
August 5th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Just as a (very) minor note, the hashing system uses SHA-1, not MD5 (very, very rare).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file
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