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From: ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu (Ravi Sinha)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.sun,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Integrity of unix disk dumps
Keywords: disk dump, integrity
Message-ID: <3125@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 91 19:44:21 GMT
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Reply-To: ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu (Ravi Sinha)
Organization: Civil Engineering Dept., Northwestern University
Lines: 21

Hi,

We recently had some problems with our Wren IV (327 MB) on Sun 4/330 
running SunOS 4.0.3. It gave write errors at several block numbers 
(in most of the partitions of this disk).  However, "format" was able 
to repair the errors by doctoring the bad blocks.  What I am worried 
about is: 
How reliable is the data dumps from the drives which had this 
problem.  Typically, if the dump is corrupted, it does not 
manifest itself either during dumping or recovering, but only 
when the files containing the bad blocks are used.  Is there 
any way to check if the dumps are OK.  BTW, because of disk space
constraints, restoring a whole partition to do any kind of check 
is not an option for me.

Any insight would be really appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ravi Sinha			|  As usual, the opinions here 
Northwestern University		|  are mine, and only mine.
ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu		|  Who'd want to claim these anyway?