This thread has turned pretty educational; now let's see if I actually understand what you and Hal have been discussing...

> and will NOT return an error code when dd finally finishes.

> (fyi, dd pads unreadable blocks with zeros if you use conv=noerror)

> it will display the io error to console

I think that-all means that:

1.
Code:
Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0s2 of=/dev/null conv=noerror bs=10240000
Password:
2610+1 records in
2610+1 records out
26730483712 bytes transferred in 481.737618 secs (55487640 bytes/sec)

does not necessarily mean that my partition has no bad blocks?

2. "dd's" padding of unreadable blocks with zeros will result in "records in" = "records out" even if it finds bad blocks?

3. after "dd" finishes its run I have to go to Console to find out if it actually found any bad blocks? (If that's the case, then still none. smile )

Thanks to both you and Hal for sharing your expertise.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire