-RMS-F-RER, file read error

[Dmitry V. Sinelnikov]

Finally, discovered some freeware utility which allows booting from DVD and performing disk-to-disk copy operation. I have attached two SCSI drives (one of them is our 'parity error'-drive, another is a new one) to x86 platform, and ran this utility to copy corrupted drive sector by sector.
Utility copied about 5-6 Gb of data and then got stuck in numerous 'read sector error'.

I guess it proves that OpenVMS system drive is non-recoverable. Also assuming BACKUP operation would fail on it too. Sad but true.

[Hoff]

Freeware? The OpenVMS distro DVD disk lets you do this sort of bulk copy stuff.

But regardless, a stuffed-up disk is a stuffed-up disk.

That's what host-based volume shadowing (HBVS) is for; disks can and do fail.

And disk failure rates and failure patterns might not be as expected:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/93