Data Corruption

Data corruption refers to errors in computer data that occur during storage, processing, or transmission, resulting in unintended modifications that render the data incorrect, unusable, or inaccessible. It can affect files, databases, memory, or network transfers and often leads to application failures, data loss, or system crashes.

Also known as: Data degradation, data errors

Comparisons

• Data Corruption vs. Data Loss: Data corruption alters or damages data, while data loss refers to the complete disappearance of data

• Data Corruption vs. Data Quality Issues: Corruption is usually unintentional and caused by hardware or software faults, whereas data quality issues often stem from human or process errors.

Pros

• (None) – Data corruption is always undesirable and indicates a problem that needs to be resolved.

Cons

• Leads to data unreliability: Can result in incorrect outputs or failed operations.

• Often hard to detect: Especially when corruption is silent and does not trigger obvious errors.

• May require recovery efforts: Restoring from backups or using specialized tools to repair affected files or systems.

Example 

A hard drive failure causes bits in a financial report spreadsheet to flip, leading to corrupted formatting and unreadable figures. The user must recover a previous version from a backup or use file repair software to restore the content.
You can find more examples about data corruption here.