Validate vs Super Validate

Procopio

Just wondering what Validate and Repair File does? And Super Validate and Repair File?

Chris_QPW

No one knows exactly. Or more correct the only people that would have any idea is the developers and they aren't saying.

The only thing states is that "Super Validate" is more aggressive than Validate.

As for Validate & Repair itself it "looks for problems" in the data file and tries to fix them as best it can. Depending on the problem it might, fix it, might not be able to fix it, it might make things worse. This is one reason it always makes a copy of your data file before it runs Validate and Repair and puts it in a VALIDATE sub folder (where your data file is stored) but note if you run Validate & Repair more than once that copy will be overwritten.

Procopio

Huh weird.

It also says the Validate process should only be used when experiencing one or more of the following issues… I wonder why.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Chris_QPW

The reason for the warning and the reason it makes a backup before doing it is because even "regular" Validate & Repair can result in an unusable file. It can also result in lost data. It will try to "make things consistent", but that might be by removing links to data that aren't connected right.

In my opinion Validate & Repair is recommended on this forum way too much as if it is the cure all for everything. In reality, it is more of an act of desperation. With one exception. And that is if a person is running it on a regular basis just to see if their file has gotten any corruption that it might detect. In other words, they might run it, find that it shows some kind of corruption and "maybe fixed", but instead of using the "fixed" file they go back to the one they know didn't have the corruption and work from there.

But it is a lot easier to just tell people to run Validate & Repair whenever they have any kind of problem that can't be explained. And it does work "sometimes".