Josef Machytka explains a new (for PostgreSQL) solution to an old problem:
PostgreSQL 18 made one very important change – data block checksums are now enabled by default for new clusters at cluster initialization time. I already wrote about it in my previous article. I also mentioned that there are still many existing PostgreSQL installations without data checksums enabled, because this was the default in previous versions. In those installations, data corruption can sometimes cause mysterious errors and prevent normal operational functioning. In this post, I want to dissect common PostgreSQL data corruption modes, to show how to diagnose them, and sketch how to recover from them.
Read on to learn more, as well as what this new change means.