From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 1 19:32:40 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 327EC16A4CE for ; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 19:32:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ox.eicat.ca (ox.eicat.ca [66.96.30.35]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E51A743D31 for ; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 19:32:39 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dgilbert@dclg.ca) Received: from [66.96.20.43] (H43.C20.B96.tor.eicat.ca [66.96.20.43]) by ox.eicat.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB6EDC83B for ; Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:32:37 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <41868F44.8070108@dclg.ca> Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 14:32:20 -0500 From: David Gilbert User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.1) Gecko/20040707 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: fsck --run-with-scissors X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 19:32:40 -0000 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.