What to put in a binary data file's header

Question

I have a simulation that reads large binary data files that we create (10s to 100s of GB). We use binary for speed reasons. These files are system dependent, converted from te

Answer 1

For large binaries, in addition to the version number I tend to put a record count and CRC, the reason being that large binaries are much more prone to get truncated and/or corrupted over time or during transfer than smaller ones. I found recently to my horror that Windows does not handle this well at all, as I used explorer to copy about 2TB across a couple of hundred files to an attached NAS device, and found 2-3 files on each copy were damaged (not completely copied).