[TriLUG] Bit rot detection without ZFS/btrfs?

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 15:40:20 -0400
Steve Holton <sph0lt0n at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Steve Litt
> <slitt at troubleshooters.com>wrote:
> 
> > This has the added benefit of acting as a backup server, and if you
> > use cp -al each time, you keep older versions so you can restore
> > non-bit-rotted files after changing out your hard disk.
> >
> 
> But what happens if there's bit-rot on the destination machine....
> 
> On second thought, let's not go there.
> 

LOL, unless the bit rot is identical, you know there's a problem either
way, and can start to deal with it. I think there might be a way to use
ddrescue to probabalize the likely "real contents" of the file on both
ends and compare.

I'm going under the assumption here that bit rot in files is very, very
rare, at least on disks that regularly pass their SMART tests.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance