a 4GB file that's made entirely of 0's when viewed in hex editor.....?!?!?!

[salsantana]

Several years ago I had to pawn a laptop. Before doing so, I'd transferred a .rar file of a directory over network using Windows XP on both ends........ it was via "Network Neighborhood" or its XP equivalent. Why this matters I'm not entirely sure. I've tried to UNRAR with WinRAR, 7-ZIP, and every other such utility. Every time I get a message saying "no archives found". I try to open with Wordpad, hoping in the header I can find a clue. No-go. I then opened that .rar file with a hex editor. This is where I derail....... the entire 4GB file is composed of zeroes. FUT the WHUCK????? HOW is it possible that file is so HUGE? I'd expect it to be FAR less than 4GB.
In roaming aimlessly for clues on Internet, I stumbled upon a possible fix but I'm nowhere near savvy enough to pursue it further. Something about the network protocol that might have been unique to XP......... how the then-unique and now-obsolete network transfer info wasn't transferred with the file OR written to my desktop computer........ does anything ring a bell?
Profuse thanks for any thoughts; there's huge amounts of writings, PowerPoint, and other stuff that was years in making.

 

[hacxx]

Could be for various reasons.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

File was corrupted during transfer. Your decompression programs are trying to "fill in the blanks". Bottom line is the file was never successfully transferred.

Technically TCP/IP isn't totally full proof particularly on older systems running XP, etc. Compressed data is particularly susceptible to corruption. That's why programs like Quickpar2 were written. So what looked OK on network level 1 didn't translate properly on layer 3. So there you have it. Compressed data has all kinds of goodies stripped out to conserve space/bandwidth. Those goodies are normally expected in each type of document and windows can sometimes use those for error recovery.
Bottom line either verify that compressed data files are intact at the receiver or include 10% PAR2 files for error recovery for foolproof insurance.

 

[salsantana]

First, thank you DVDR_Dog for the response. Ah-hah....... yes, in my years using UseNet portal alibis.com (R.I.P.?) I became quite familiar with the PAR utils like Quickpar. And I'm just able to comprehend what you're saying about compressed data susceptibility to corruption.
It sounds as if .par files should have been generated prior to the transfer attempt and also transferred with the .rar file. Argh. It's a digital blob of billions of blobs now.
thanks again!!!

 

[AFFASocial]

Have you tried putting the file on a system with Windows XP installed and then trying to Unzip it?