corruption
n. uncountablen. the process of data becoming broken or unreadable. This happens when a computer file gets damaged and can no longer be opened correctly.
n. the process by which computer data becomes degraded or damaged, resulting in errors or loss of information. Often occurs during storage, transmission, or processing due to hardware failure or software bugs.
The file is unreadable because of data corruption.
A sudden power outage during the system update led to widespread corruption of the operating system files.
Advanced file systems use checksums to detect and repair silent data corruption, ensuring that the information retrieved from the disk remains identical to what was originally written.
Borrowed from French corruption, from Latin corruptiō, equivalent to corrupt + -ion.