Check for corrupt files?

[sjfootballer01]

PLEASE HELP

Sorry if this is the wrong forum and if I use incorrect terminology. I'm not a computer person.

Anyway, I have a mac mini running 10.6.8. I left a web browser open while I was eating lunch. I came back an hour later and found the computer unresponsive.

I couldn't force quit anything. I couldn't command + control + eject. Control + power didn't work. The caps lock button didn't even light up if I pressed it. It seemed like the only thing I could do was hold the power button for 5 seconds.

When I turned my computer back on I ran disk utility and that said everything was fine, but how can I check if any files have become corrupt?

I wasn't downloading or uploading anything myself, but I guess the browser could've been downloading temp files or whatever right?

I have a lot of video files that I haven't had a chance to back up yet and I don't know how I can go about checking if any of those have become damaged. I can attempt to play them all, but that wouldn't tell me if there is corruption somewhere during the middle of the video which screws up just a couple frames right?

EDIT

I guess a more important question might be. If the video files themselves weren't being accessed what are the chances in those files actually becoming corrupted?

If this is the wrong forum please move so I have the best chance of getting a response.

Thanks for any advice/info

 

[gsahli]

I'm hoping someone else has an idea, but none of the software tools I'm aware of check individual files for corruption. Instead, they check the file directory/index for corruption. Because the directory gets written to more often than the files do. The directory contains an index of the location of all the pieces of the file on your hard drive.
Have you tried Verify in the Mac Disk Utility?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

If Disk Utility reported no issue with things, then you are likely fine. What browser are you using and what sites did you have open? What are the specs of your Mac Mini? Your action wouldn't have randomly corrupted files across your entire system for no particular reason.

If you were in the middle of editing a document or file or something and your system froze requiring a hard powering off, then there is a good chance that particular document might be partially saved and you might lose your more recent changes. However, that doesn't mean that all videos or documents on your computer get corrupted..

 

[sjfootballer01]

It's a mac mini running 10.6.8. I was using chrome as my browser. I think it was like a shopping deals or coupon site or something. Something very ad heavy probably. Which brings up another question...

Sites these days seem to store a ridiculous amount of temp files. I'll watch multiple GB of HDD space disappear in a matter of minutes. There have been a couple times where I've completely maxed out the HDD because again I walked away from the computer for a bit and forgot about it. My question is what happens at zero kb left? Will it stop downloading temp files? Can they overwrite and damage other files (docs, audio, video) stored on the computer?

Thanks again.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

A quick primer on how these things work..not knowing/having enough information leads to paranoia about everything..

Websites are allowed to store data on your computer by way of cookies that you can either arbitrarily allow or disallow. Disallowing cookies to be stored at all is a great way of ensuring that a website doesn't track you or store information about you. However, this also means that you will have to remember all of your credentials and so on. Beyond this control, websites can't write any other files to your computer.

Browsers, in an attempt to speed up browsing of websites will download collateral from the sites you visit and cache that data in hopes of reusing it. So if you were to visit a site frequently, the browser will attempt to use their images and stylesheets and other files from a local copy if it hasn't changed on the server. Otherwise, it will download a new copy for future use. This sort of downloading can go on forever and can indeed use up a significant amount of space. It is good to routinely go and clear the cache of your browser to throw away these temporary files and regain the space. You could, depending on the browser, disallow caching of files but that might lead to generally slow browsing since EVERYTHING has to be downloaded for every site you visit even on repeated visits.

You ask what happens when you run out of space, well no OS likes that particular scenario and you should try to avoid that as much as you can. So get into a routine habit of maintenance and you will be fine. However, the browser isn't going to randomly start overwriting your documents or music files in other folders and websites don't even have access to any of those folders.

 

[toMACsh]

Probably don' t need to check your files, but TechTool Pro will verify File Structures. It's not a cheap application/utility, but it's a good one. The TTP Help file will tell you what that test does in geek speak.