Best way to determine a disk isn't bad before you start imaging

[Thraka]

I was curious of you guys had an idea about how to make sure a disk is actually still good before you create an image of it?

I was using scandisk [A:|B:] /checkonly on MS-DOS.

[admin]

That is one way. I make an image and then look at the flux data visually to see if there is anything odd if needed.

[jupp]

for pc disks, just make a dump of it (using DD or similar tool). since all sectors are secured by CRC checksums, and reading broken sectors would give an error, you can be pretty sure that the disk is ok if that works. not sure if scandisk would do the equivalent (with all sectors), but perhaps it does.

[admin]

Scan disk does basic CRC error checking for each sector if you tell it to check the surface.