[Bug-ddrescue] Available feature to test for drive prefailures?

[Paul L Daniels]

        One thing I've noticed with almost all drives that I copy from old 
machines is that frequently there are zones where the bitrate drops notably but 
doesn't get classed as an error in ddrescue ( which is fine ).  Would it be 
possible to add a feature to ddrescue that lets you mark such zones in a log - 
or, more generically, log the whole copy process to another file for later 
review/examination?

        I admit that I've already kludged a copy of 1.16 to dump the verbose 
info to stderr so I can then capture to a logfile.  I've also looked at the -a 
option but it seems that it invariably triggers on the start of the ddrescue 
process for some reason (ie, if I do  ddrescue   -v -f /dev/sda /dev/null on a 
USB3 device it'll start with a low read rate for the first second and thus  
it'll trip almost immediately with the -a option.

        I appologise if this is completely outside of the scope of ddrescue, as 
I agree I'm trying to turn it into a bit of a 'disk testing' tool in this 
instance.

Regards,
Paul.

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