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Parity Protection (PAR2)

Detecting corruption tells you a file is damaged. Parity protection lets FileGriffon actually repair it, using the PAR2 format (via par2cmdline-turbo).

Free tier gets it too, at Light redundancy. Protection and repair are always paired together — you’re never left able to protect a file you then can’t repair, or vice versa. What Free is limited on is the redundancy preset: Light (5%) only, on your one active vault (see Vaults for what “active” means if you have more than one). Pro unlocks Standard (10%) and Archival (20%) redundancy, with no per-vault restriction.

Enabling it

Per vault, in Vault Settings:

  1. Turn on Parity Protection.
  2. Set Parity Scope — include or exclude specific subfolders from coverage (useful if part of a vault is low-value or already backed up elsewhere).
  3. Pick a Redundancy preset:
    • Light — 5% recovery data (available on Free)
    • Standard — 10% (default, requires Pro)
    • Archival — 20% (requires Pro)
  4. Optionally relocate where .par2 files are stored via “Change location…”.

Higher redundancy protects against more simultaneous damage but uses more disk space. On Free tier, the Standard/Archival buttons are shown but disabled with an upgrade prompt rather than hidden — you can still see what they’d do.

If you’re on Free with more than one vault (e.g. left over from a trial), Parity Protection can only be turned on for your one active vault — the same one that stays actively monitored. Paused vaults can’t start new PAR2 protection until you upgrade, though any parity created before the vault was paused keeps working (verify and repair are never blocked by license, only new creation).

What it can and can’t fix

  • Repair works for files that have parity coverage in scope and where the corruption doesn’t change the file’s size (same-size bit-level damage).
  • It is not a substitute for backups — parity data protects against partial corruption, not deletion of both the file and its parity data, and not against damage larger than the redundancy percentage covers.
  • Repair-in-place is blocked while a scan is actively running on the same vault — wait for the scan to finish, then try again.
  • If the drive holding parity storage is disconnected, repair/parity operations are blocked until it’s reconnected.
  • There are two repair modes: repair in place (overwrites the damaged file after successful reconstruction), or repair to a location you choose (writes the recovered file elsewhere instead, leaving the original untouched).

Restore Assistant

For a more cautious, manual restore, the Restore Assistant lets you point FileGriffon at a known-good copy of a file (e.g. from an external backup) instead of relying on PAR2 reconstruction. It verifies the replacement against your tracked hash before using it, and never overwrites silently in place — the damaged original is renamed aside (e.g. filename_corrupt.ext) rather than deleted, so you can always recover it if the replacement turns out to be wrong.

Orphaned parity files

If a protected file is removed from tracking — swept after being MISSING past its grace window, or matched as moved to a new location — its database record is deleted but its .par2 file on disk is not deleted automatically. FileGriffon surfaces this with a small badge in the nav bar instead, pointing to Settings → Database, where you can review and delete the leftover files with a manual “Clean now” sweep. This is deliberate: disk deletion always requires your confirmation, even for FileGriffon’s own byproduct files.

Regeneration

Parity data is regenerated automatically after you Accept a file (i.e. tell FileGriffon a changed file is intentional, not corruption), and after scans that complete on a scheduled vault. It does not run mid-scan, and a vault stuck on manual-only scheduling won’t get automatic parity catch-up until you run a scan.