{
  "slug": "silent-data-corruption",
  "term": "Silent data corruption",
  "aliases": [
    "SDC"
  ],
  "definition": "Silent data corruption is a data-integrity error that a specified storage component or layer does not detect or report.",
  "note": "State the observation boundary. A drive can return incorrect data without reporting an error, while a higher-level checksum or identity check detects it. The FAST 2008 field study used silent for corruption missed by the drive and other hardware, not necessarily by the whole system. [field]\n\nA latent sector error that produces an explicit error on access is a different observation. [lse] A matching checksum can accompany stale data after a lost write; detection and successful recovery are separate outcomes. [parity]\n\nIn the paper's single-error RAID model, a misdirected block can carry a higher version number. Physical identity is checked before versions to avoid selecting that wrong block for repair. [parity]",
  "related": [
    "checksum",
    "latent-sector-error",
    "identity-discrepancy",
    "lost-write"
  ],
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "field",
      "title": "Bairavasundaram et al., An Analysis of Data Corruption in the Storage Stack, FAST 2008, sections 2.2-2.3.",
      "url": "https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast08/tech/full_papers/bairavasundaram/bairavasundaram.pdf",
      "accessed": "2026-10-25"
    },
    {
      "id": "lse",
      "title": "Bairavasundaram et al., An Analysis of Latent Sector Errors in Disk Drives, SIGMETRICS 2007, sections 2.2 and 3.2-3.3.",
      "url": "https://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/latent-sigmetrics07.pdf",
      "accessed": "2026-10-25"
    },
    {
      "id": "parity",
      "title": "Krioukov et al., Parity Lost and Parity Regained, FAST 2008, sections 2.3, 4.4 and 4.6.",
      "url": "https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/fast08/tech/full_papers/krioukov/krioukov_html/main.html",
      "accessed": "2026-10-25"
    },
    {
      "id": "hesela",
      "title": "Hesela: Silent corruption and the detection-layer boundary",
      "url": "https://hesela.com/analyses/silent-corruption-checksum-mismatches/#silent-heading",
      "accessed": "2026-10-25"
    }
  ],
  "provenance": [
    "The definition specifies an observation boundary; it is a synthesis, not a quotation from a universal storage standard. Historical detected events do not estimate today's undetected-error rate."
  ],
  "status": "unknown",
  "advantages": [],
  "limitations": [],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "updated": "2026-10-25"
}