isn't that exactly what zfs supports ?
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No, ZFS has checksums. It detects errors but can only repair them if the data is mirrored.
ECC would work if you could read both the ECC and enough of the data out of the defective block. I am not sure how frequent this situation is, but I suspect full-block failures are more common.
Considering the trends in storage capacity, I think the mirroring approach done with ZFS is a clever solution. One could even conceive a file system that would position multiple copies of blocks of frequently accessed files all over the disks in order to maximize throughput, keeping only a minimum redundancy condition declared by file.
I am happy file systems are no longer boring ;-)
Ah... The difference a day makes.
The ECC idea could work, but it would be best to build it into the drive's firmware. This way the drive would get read errors less often, could attempt to rewrite the block or to relocate it somewhere else in case of a "bad enough" error.