Does OSFClone copy bad sectors too?

[DoeADeeer]

I apologize if this has been a post already, I looked and didn't see it.

My situation is that I have FreeNAS on a USB stick, which appears to have an error so it can't boot. I was able to use the OSFClone utility to write an image from it. I then used that image on a working USB, however, when I boot into FreeNAS from the new USB stick I am stuck at the same error. My understanding is that it does a bit-by-bit clone so if one is bad, will the image be "bad" too?

[Richard (PassMark)]

If you are using the Clone complete drive, OSFClone uses ddrescue to make the clone. It should report the bad sectors but not write those sector. If the output is a device, the areas marked as bad-sector will still contain the data previously present there. So if the source is corrupted, then the copy will likely contain incoherent sectors as well (unless the bad sectors are in unused space).

[DoeADeeer]

Thanks for the info, I'll install a fresh copy of FreeNAS on the USB stick and then us the cloning software. If it works then, I know that the source on the first one was bad, but should now have a good backup. I'll update once that is done.