Editing Data degradation (section)

==Causes==
This deterioration can be caused by a variety of factors that impact the reliability and integrity of digital information, including physical factors, [[software error]]s, security breaches, [[human error]], obsolete technology, and unauthorized access incidents.<ref name="ShengLance_2015"/><ref name="PCMag"/><ref name="Hakob_2023"/><ref name="Triches_2006"/>

Most disk, [[disk controller]] and higher-level systems are subject to a slight chance of unrecoverable failure. With ever-growing disk capacities, file sizes, and increases in the amount of data stored on a disk, the likelihood of the occurrence of data decay and other forms of uncorrected and undetected [[data corruption]] increases.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gray |first1=Jim|last2=van Ingen|first2=Catharine|title=Empirical Measurements of Disk Failure Rates and Error Rates |journal=Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2005-166|date=December 2005 |url=http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/64599/tr-2005-166.pdf|access-date=4 March 2013}}</ref>

Low-level disk controllers typically employ [[error correction code]]s (ECC) to correct erroneous data.<ref>{{cite web |title=ECC and Spare Blocks help to keep Kingston SSD data protected from errors|url=https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/data-protection |website=Kingston Technology Company|access-date=30 March 2021}}</ref>

Higher-level software systems may be employed to mitigate the risk of such underlying failures by increasing redundancy and implementing integrity checking, error correction codes and self-repairing algorithms.<ref name="Salter_2014"/> The [[ZFS]] [[file system]] was designed to address many of these data corruption issues.<ref name="Bonwick_2009"/> The [[Btrfs]] file system also includes data protection and recovery mechanisms,<ref>{{cite web|author=<!--wiki-->|title=btrfs Wiki: Features|publisher=The btrfs Project | url = https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page#Features | access-date = 19 September 2013}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=February 2025}} as does [[ReFS]].<ref name="Wlodarz_2014"/>