[random_comment]

> Most kinds of damage cannot be repaired on a live filesystem anyway. Even in ZFS.

You're totally wrong.

The easiest way to demonstrate why is for you to set up a script to randomly write zeros/junk in any amount, at any time, anywhere over one of the block devices being used by ZFS, all day every day.

[Assuming you're using one of the available forms of redundancy i.e. multiple copies, ZRAID1/2, or mirroring etc.]

Sit back and watch ZFS giving no fucks at all as it repairs all the damage passively.

You can even introduce such damage in moderate quantities across all of the block devices used by ZFS. Again, you'll see a goddamn incredible amount of self-healing going on and accurate reporting about where it's unable to recover files due to the damage across multiple volumes being too extensive.

It's unlikely that even in this extreme instance of willful massive harm to the disks you'll see the filesystem being damaged because a) filesystem metadata is checksummed too b) the metadata blocks are automatically stored twice in different places c) you also have the redundancy of multiple devices e.g. mirroring/zraid.

Try it, prove me wrong.