Parchive is known as an erasure code system that is mainly associated with PAR files. It uses the parity file format, the format that is responsible for checksum verification performance as well as perform corrupted and missing data repair. Since Parchive is an erasure code system, it specializes in correcting errors and it is originally created for the solving of problems related to the reliable transfer of Usenet files. But these days, Parchive is already used to protect all types of data problems such as data corruption, damage and bit rot whether they are Usenet files or not. Parchive comes with a variety of versions already such as the PAR versions 1, 2, and 3. These versions differ from each other though especially versions 1 and 2 as well as the PAR 3 version also won’t be able to access applications for PAR. This is why even if Parchive is associated with PAR files, these PAR files are PAR2, PAR3, etc. files and they correspond to each of the different Parchive version that created the file.
Ez7z is a user interface for p7zip, an archiver used as a compression tool for Mac. It allows decompression of files such as zip, rar, tar, gz, 7z, bzip2, while you compress into zip, tar, bzip2, 7z, gz and bzip2. You can preview archive contents and delete files without having to open the archive, and for processing of multiple files. You can also create, repair and verify PAR2 files. Using Ez7z interface, you can perform drag-and-drop, and select the work you need by clicking one of the following functions: Shrink, Delete, View, Expand or PAR2. You can also set our preferences such as your default archiver, do multi-threading and designate where you want to save your files. PAR2 [Parchive 2 Index File] is a project intended to provided data recovery for programs to be able to verify and retrieve missing parts from a set of data. It extends the potential capabilities of PAR, therefore PAR2 is an improvement of PAR1. Unlike PAR1, PAR2 can repair damaged files. It does not require all PAR files to be of equal size and to obtain largest source file to recover a small-sized data file. With PAR2, you don’t need to split files into many pieces to achieve the protection you desire. PAR2 can handle 32,768 files while PAR1 can only handle 255.
QuickPar was created for windows operating systems, but there are later versions that can also be use in Linux platforms, though the WINE (Windows Emulator) software needs to be available in the system. Quickpar was developed by Peter Clements in 2003 to provide users with the ability to make "parchives" in order to recover information from damage files or group of files. This is helpful in restoring those damaged and corrupted files. In addition, it can locate missing files. This software is integrated with an algorithm called RS (Reed-Solomon) error correction. Thru this, QuickPar can implement comprehensive restoration functionalities by producing adequate parity volumes. It can be use and downloaded for free, though it is not an open source application. The users’ windows operating system should include Quickpar in the "allowable" programs without restrictions, in order to fully enable its wide range of features developed for reconstructing damaged files in the system. There are times that the Windows system might stop its functions, especially when Quickpar allocates large bundles of files. The users’ system must have enough data storage space to avoid slowdowns or freezes after using Quickpar.