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I have noticed recently that older files once downloaded show a one of two missing blocks but PAR repair blocks although present show "damaged repair blocks NO blocks available" Is this a perverse way of making downloaders go to the trouble of downloading a large file and THEN finding it is un-recoverable rather than removing the file in the first place?

I have also noticed recently a couple of downloads run the PAR file to show no recovery needed, so all looks fine but the files then do NOT create the downloaded file even though Quick par says all is fine. Anyone else noticed this? Sometimes I have been able to re-download the file from another server and that completes fine.
Regards, Graeme

#1 - You know there's no "standard" for this stuff. I've seem what you're reporting. Where a posting group posts a set of files with PARS but the pars are useless. It's not clear if it's deliberate or if something just went wrong with their posting software.

#2 - Keep in mind that PAR files will only restore a set of files back to the state they were in when the PARS were generated over the files. So, if you have a damaged RAR set, then generate a set of PARS over these files, what'll come out after repair is still the same damaged set of RAR files. I've seen this numerous time where PAR said everything was good but the files wouldn't unrar completely because of checksum errors.

I'd say for #1 the quality of the server is the most important things. Some news servers don't have the retention they once claimed they did. So they can't reliably deliver old files even if they haven't been taken down.