Glossary

Vault — one monitored drive, folder, or single file, with its own label, schedule, and settings. See Vaults.

Head hash — a fast, partial hash used during a scan’s sync phase to quickly detect whether a file has changed or match it against a moved file, without hashing the whole thing. See Scanning & Detection.

Full hash — the complete, whole-file hash computed during the hashing phase, used to definitively verify a file is intact or flag it CORRUPT.

Hash mode (Protected / Raw) — Protected (default) keys hashes with an HMAC secret unique to your install, so a stolen database file alone can’t be used to derive meaningful hashes. Raw stores plain checksums with no keying. See Security & Encryption.

Parity protection / PAR2 — optional recovery data FileGriffon can generate for a vault so certain kinds of corruption can be repaired, not just detected. See Parity Protection.

Redundancy preset — how much parity recovery data is generated relative to file size: Light (5%, Free), Standard (10%, Pro), Archival (20%, Pro).

Swap credit — a Free-tier allowance to replace your one active vault slot (e.g. after a wrong path or a failed drive) without losing it permanently. 5 at install, +1 roughly every 182 days, uncapped. See Vaults.

Vault pausing — what happens to extra vaults when you’re over your plan’s limit (e.g. after a trial ends). Paused vaults keep all their data and history but stop scanning until you upgrade. Never a deletion.

Grace period (license activation) — a one-time, 72-hour window where FileGriffon runs fully unlocked if it can’t reach the license server during activation. This does not apply when a trial or subscription expires — see Licensing & Trial.

Trial — a 14-day, server-issued evaluation of Pro features.

Restore Assistant — a manual, guided restore where you supply a known-good copy of a file yourself; independent of PAR2 repair. See Parity Protection.

Orphaned parity file — a .par2 file left on disk after its tracked file’s database record was removed (swept as MISSING, or matched as moved); never auto-deleted, always requires a manual “Clean now” confirmation.

Cross-Machine Recovery Key — an export of your install’s HMAC hash-key secret, used to keep Protected-vault hash comparisons working after moving your database to a new machine. See Migrating to a New Machine.