Re: [Bug-ddrescue] man pages clarification

[Katona Gábor]

  Hi Udo,

You mix two parts of the manual. The first quote is about general
behavior of ddrescue, and is totally correct.

The second quote is from the "8 Fill Mode" chapter, because you can
instruct ddrescue to fill different types of sectors with selected
value, but only after you have run the default mode of ddrescue. You can
use this method to test for damaged files, and your second quote is just
from the recipe of how to do this.

So ddrescue will not write zeros to bad sectors, but after you have made
a rescue copy, you can fill different types of sectors with arbitrary
values.

Regards,

Gábor



> Hi all,
> 
> I was wondering if I have a misconception of what ddrescue does when finding 
> bad blocks or if this is an error on the man pages (or at least on 
> www.gnu.org/s/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html):
> 
> You write 
> 
> "Ddrescue does *not* write zeros to the output when it finds bad sectors in 
> the input, and does not truncate the output file if not asked to."
> 
> Later on you write
> 
> "6) Optionally fill the bad-sector blocks of the copied drive or image file 
> with zeros to restore the disc image."
> 
> Shouldn't this be
> 
> "Ddrescue *does write* zeros to the output when it finds bad sectors in the 
> input, and does not truncate the output file if not asked to." ?
> 
> Cheers from Hamburg
>