
Sometimes, like in the case of a bad physical sector on the drive, your corrupted file may be part of a much larger problem. Problems with your hard disk can also lead to corrupted files. RELATED: Bad Sectors Explained: Why Hard Drives Get Bad Sectors and What You Can Do About It

This can lead to the corruption of any files that were currently open, including not just your documents, but even operating system files. When this doesn’t happen-like, say, if you lose power or if your computer crashes-it doesn’t have the chance to close files the right way. When you shut down your computer, it is supposed to close out any files it has open properly (or give you the chance to do so). There are, of course, other reasons that files can become corrupt, as well. Sometimes, though, you’ll have no idea that something went wrong until you try to open the file later. Often, these apps will notice the error and let you know that something went wrong, giving you the chance to try again.
#HOW TO FIND CORRUPTED FILES ON MAC DOWNLOAD#
Your browser (or other download app) may even have problems writing a downloaded file to disk. Your backup app may have problems when writing out your backup. A compression app may experience problems while creating an archive. An office app might suffer a glitch at the wrong time while saving a document.

This can happen in various ways, the most common of which is when an app suffers an error while saving or creating a file. Usually, files become corrupted when being written to a disk.
