Originally posted by Marc Sabatella I'm aware of that. Similarly, my camera's firmware might have a bug that causes corrupt output in the first place; the software the copies my files to my computer might have a bug that corrupts files; the OS filesystem software might have a bug that corrupts files as they are moved around or reallocated to different disk blocks, etc. At some point, we have to ask just how big a risk we are actually facing and whether we really need to let that determine our behavior. I suppose people who wear motorcycle helmets every time they walk out the front door to pick up the paper (just in case something falls out of a passing airplane overhead, I guess) might choose to worry about software corrupting image data when writing metadata. The rest of us can just get on with our lives.
certainly - but there is no need to increase the number of points where damage might happen, moreover that you might not notice that immediately... that is why normal raw converters are not modifying raw files, keeping their work elsewhere in sidecar files/DAM databases... provided that original in-camera raw file is preserved you can of course do whatever you want w/ the copy.