Coding - Error control
9.4. The whole story!

The codes discussed in this chapter are all widely used, but the most widely used codes for data storage are more sophisticated because they need to deal with more complex errors than a single bit changing. For example, if a CD is scratched or a hard disk has a small fault, it's likely to affect many adjacent bits. These systems use codes based on more advanced mathematical concepts. The most widely used codes for storage and data transfer are the Reed-Solomon codes and Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC). For human readable numbers such as barcodes, bank numbers, tax numbers, social security numbers and so on, checksums are very common, and the Luhn algorithm is one of the more widely used. Larger checksums are also used to check that downloaded files are correct. The parity method is a form of Hamming code.