Read Error Recovery for Unsafe Compaction

[zipmagic]

When wimlib is being consumed from Windows PE/RE, sometimes a read error occurs:

WhatsApp Image 2026-02-05 at 21.29.00.jpeg (96.2 KiB) Viewed 1776 times

Which is always fatal during unsafe compaction passes:

WhatsApp Image 2026-02-05 at 00.23.13.jpeg (127.69 KiB) Viewed 1776 times

The thing with these types of failures is, they are almost always intermittent. The above examples were on two different OS instances - both on different sets of hardware (Intel 285HX and AMD 9955HX3D, Phison vs. WD SSD), albeit identical base OS image. While a hardware error cannot be ruled out, it is more than likely a transient failure in Windows and/or the OS image and/or the updates that broke something in it.

I have requested in the past that a workaround be instituted in these scenarious, so as to not render the WIMBoot volume unbootable after this failure. The requests were always turned down, due to the inherent difficulty of reconciling all chunks affected by the read error (it's not just a single file potentially - although the progress report makes it look like it is - instead, it is more often a shared chunk of data that may be in use by countless other files, thanks to built-in data deduplication).

Claude AI to the rescue, then:

wimlib-1.14.5-correct-fix-all-files.zip

(1.13 MiB) Downloaded 76 times

Would it be possible to check whether Claude did a decent enough job here in providing the requested recovery option for us here?

[zipmagic]

Also, here should be just the modified files, assuming Claude AI hasn't hallucinated too badly, of course:

wimlib-1.14.5-correct-fix-modified-files.zip

(111.1 KiB) Downloaded 82 times

I truly hope this would be the healing salve for these kinds of (wishfully formerly) fatal read errors?