How do I make rsync ignore unreadable files (damaged sectors)?

[Paul Slootman]

On Tue 22 Dec 2009, Stefan Nowak wrote:
> 
> How can one voluntarily "smash" only a particular sector of a hard
> disk drive? Even if you had a test HD for "smashing", you don't know

See (under linux) the manpage for hdparm:

--make-bad-sector
    Deliberately  create  a bad sector (aka. "media error") on the disk.
    EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS.  DO NOT USE THIS FLAG!!  This can be useful
    for testing  of  device/RAID error  recovery  mechanisms. ...

Paul