fsck --run-with-scissors

[David Gilbert]

You know... I've had a number of unrelated disk failures in the last 7
days.  In general, we have backups.  Some of the failures are such that
I can still mount the fs readonly and avoid the dead area and get the
last iota of data off, but some are not.

It would be really useful if fsck_ffs had a --run-with-scissors mode.
Meaning a mode of last resort that may or may not make the disk work and
may or may not totally screw with the disk.

As an example, my laptop drive died.  I don't really care about the data
on disk because it's backed up.  However, it will be another day before
Dell shows up with a new drive... meaning that now I'm suffering in XP.
In many cases, if the block-in-question was written to (even though it
can't be read), it would be reallocated by the drive logic.  Run with
scissors should write all zeros to a block it can't read.

Are there any equivalents to --run-with-scissors?

Dave.