ICE ECC (par2-like tool)

[greybeard]

Can you send me a link to the tools/info on your setup.

 

This is what I have been using for the past eight months. It runs under Windows. I have written VB scripts to genereate commands and tested various recovery scenarios. Like most software it has some idiosyncrasies but does what I was looking for. If anyone wants to discuss it further we can open a thread over in the lounge.

 

http://www.ice-graphics.com/ICEECC/IndexE.html

 

PS: If you happen to take a look at the link don't get distracted by the references to "CD-R/DVD-R". It works just fine on hard drives starting at directory x and includes all files, sub folders and files in the sub folders where x is the starting point. UNC names work too.

[SSD]

It ways it supports "Wine for Linux", not quite sure what that is and wheter it would work on the unRAID server itself.

 

greybeard - have you experimented with trying to run it on the unRAID server?

[BRiT]

Thanks for posting the information. I find it very interesting, especially the speed benefit over PAR2.

[greybeard]

greybeard - have you experimented with trying to run it on the unRAID server?

 

No. I don't run anything on the unRAID server except unRAID, unMenu and the preclear script.

 

Creating ECC files is very CPU demanding. Running on a Phenom II x4 940 processor (3Ghz) it takes 15 minutes to create the ECC file for a directory that contains 8GB of files. Overall CPU utilization is about 50%. The processor in my unRAID server is no where near that powerful. On the other hand running a verify is much faster. The same 8GB of data can be verified in about 1 minute with low CPU utilization. Recovery of a missing file or corrupted data kicks the CPU back into high gear. Not sure what the memory demands are.

 

Because verification is done for everything under the directory that you use as a base, you can not split directory contents without making the ECC file useless. So I create one ECC file for each low level directory that holds material that I want to keep together. Sometimes that means only one 50G file per directory. That way I can move directories arround without having to rebuild ECC files. This also hints at why I wrote scripts to manage the creation of ECC files and verification of stored data.

 

I didn't really do a speed comparison to PAR2 so I don't know how accurate their claims are. I chose ICEECC because of the interface and the way sub directories are handled and because it passed the testing that I did. When issuing create or verify commands from a script ICEECC adds them to a queue and process them in the order the commands were issued. This is very useful when creating a batch of 50-100 commands before leaving to visit relatives for the weekend. I am sure the commands could be issued from a BAT file.

 

Sorry I am not any help at all regarding how this would work (if at all) on an unRAID server.

[jamerson9]

This sounds very interesting. I've been using par2 when backing up data to DVDs, just in case I get a scratch and can't read a file or two.

I would be interested if there is an archive of example scripts to automate creating these files.

[greybeard]

I am not aware of any script library to automate ICE ECC processing. The scripts I run essentially build command lines and then execute them using shell.run. Kind of like this:

 

cmd = ICEECCProgramPath Parameters

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

oShell.Run cmd, 1, true

 

The parameters specify things like the action (create, verify, etc), base path, ECC file name and some other details. These are documented in the help file that is installed with the program.

 

All of the real logic in the scripts I use centers arround figuring out what directories I want ECC files for, checking to see if an ECC file exists and then creating them or verifying the source files. That logic is very specific to the way I use ECC files.

 

However I would suggest that before digging into scripts to automate a process, it would be a useful exercise to run the program manually to figure out if it will meet your needs. If you decide it is something you want to use I can provide more detail regarding the scripts I use, a couple problems I ran into and workarrounds.

 

CAUTION: Like anything you download from the internet there is a risk that ICE ECC could contain spy ware, virsus or other malicious code. I have not found any in the EXE I am using but that does not mean anything more than just that. It could still be there but I just don't know it. Nor do I know anything about the publisher.