Identifying files corrupted by bad sectors?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Tomlinson
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Mike Tomlinson

I recently moved my OS installation from a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB
drive to a 120Gb Barracuda 7200.7 drive. This was because the old drive
had developed bad sectors and had been in constant use for three years.

Neither Ghost v5.1d nor Drive Image 2002 would image the old disk, both
aborting when encountering bad sectors. Ghost aborted with an "internal
consistency error" even though the "ignore bad sector" option was turned
on.

In the end, I used dd_rescue on a Knoppix box to image the drive and am
now using the cloned drive (typing this using it.)

It would be very useful, however, to know which files have been damaged
by the bad sectors on the original drive. Is there anything that will
analyse the drive and tell me this, so I can restore them from tape?

Thanks.
 
Mike Tomlinson said:
I recently moved my OS installation from a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB
drive to a 120Gb Barracuda 7200.7 drive. This was because the old drive
had developed bad sectors and had been in constant use for three years.
Click to expand...
Neither Ghost v5.1d nor Drive Image 2002 would image the old disk,
both aborting when encountering bad sectors. Ghost aborted with an
"internal consistency error" even though the "ignore bad sector"
option was turned on.
Click to expand...
In the end, I used dd_rescue on a Knoppix box to image the
drive and am now using the cloned drive (typing this using it.)
Click to expand...
It would be very useful, however, to know which files have been
damaged by the bad sectors on the original drive. Is there anything
that will analyse the drive and tell me this, so I can restore them from tape?
Click to expand...

There are a few utes around that will report bad
sectors by both the block number and the file.

Unfortunately I cant remember which ones do that.

You should be able to do a binary compare using a knoppix CD
and the ones affected by the bads should show up that way.
 
Rod Speed said:
There are a few utes around that will report bad
sectors by both the block number and the file.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I cant remember which ones do that.
Click to expand...

Doesnt the Seagate diagnostic report the file affected ?

Unfortunately I cant try that because I dont have a hard drive with bads.

One approach would be to try the bad scanners on the Ultimate Boot CD.
 
Rod Speed said:
Doesnt the dd_rescue log file list the ones its had a problem with ?
Click to expand...

Only by sector number, not by filename, but thanks for the thought.
I'll have a go with your other suggestions. I took two copies of the
original disk, so can have a play with the second copy.
 
Previously Mike Tomlinson said:
I recently moved my OS installation from a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB
drive to a 120Gb Barracuda 7200.7 drive. This was because the old drive
had developed bad sectors and had been in constant use for three years.
Click to expand...
Neither Ghost v5.1d nor Drive Image 2002 would image the old disk, both
aborting when encountering bad sectors. Ghost aborted with an "internal
consistency error" even though the "ignore bad sector" option was turned
on.
Click to expand...
In the end, I used dd_rescue on a Knoppix box to image the drive and am
now using the cloned drive (typing this using it.)
Click to expand...
It would be very useful, however, to know which files have been damaged
by the bad sectors on the original drive. Is there anything that will
analyse the drive and tell me this, so I can restore them from tape?
Click to expand...

Since you are already using Linux (I assume), this is simple:

Do a backup with tar to nowhere:

tar cf - /dev/null <whatever is to backup>

It will run into a read error on each file with a defect
and report that. I am not sure whether you need to fix
each hit and then re-run or whether tar will continue
and report all errors that way.

Another option should be a recursive wc or md5sum:

find /cdrom -type f -exec md5sum \{\} \; > /dev/null

Arno
 
Previously Mike Tomlinson said:
Only by sector number, not by filename, but thanks for the thought.
I'll have a go with your other suggestions. I took two copies of the
original disk, so can have a play with the second copy.
Click to expand...

You cannoty find the defects on the copy, only on the original...

Arno
Click to expand...
 
Mike Tomlinson said:
I recently moved my OS installation from a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB
drive to a 120Gb Barracuda 7200.7 drive. This was because the old drive
had developed bad sectors and had been in constant use for three years.

Neither Ghost v5.1d nor Drive Image 2002 would image the old disk, both
aborting when encountering bad sectors. Ghost aborted with an "internal
consistency error" even though the "ignore bad sector" option was turned
on.

In the end, I used dd_rescue on a Knoppix box to image the drive and am
now using the cloned drive (typing this using it.)

It would be very useful, however, to know which files have been damaged
by the bad sectors on the original drive.
Click to expand...
Is there anything that will analyse the drive and tell me this, so I can
restore them from tape?
Click to expand...

So, what's wrong with using the OS native utilities specifically for that purpose?
 
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