Integrity of disk dumps

[Ravi Sinha]

We recently had some problems with our Wren IV (327 MB) and it gave write
errors at several block numbers (in most of the partitions of the 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 was 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 problems, even
restoring a whole partition to do checksum is not an option for me.

Any insight would be really appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

Ravi Sinha
Northwestern University
ravi at earth.ce.nwu.edu