fsck --run-with-scissors

[Brooks Davis]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 02:32:20PM -0500, David Gilbert wrote:
> 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?

If you've got somewhere else you could put a copy of the disk, PHK
committed a program called recoverdisk to current recently.  It's in
tools/tools/recoverdisk and you have to build it by hand, but it will
copy a disk except for the bits that are too corrupt to read.

-- Brooks