Improving disk sector integrity using k-dimension hashing

Abstract

The integrity of data stored on a hard disk is typically verified by computing the chained hash value of disk sector data in a specific order. However, this technique fails when one or more sectors turn bad during storage, making it impossible to compute their hash values. This paper presents a k-dimension hashing scheme, which computes and stores multiple hash values for each hard disk sector. The hash values for each sector are computed in different ways; thus, when a hard disk develops bad sectors, it is still possible to verify the integrity of the data in the unaffected sectors. The paper also discusses how hashing parameters may be tuned to achieve desirable properties, including minimizing the probability that the integrity of a sector cannot be verified because other sectors have gone bad. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.