On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 01:30:44PM +0000, Alan wrote: > HPA has nothign to do with sector remapping.
What the drive reports as "native" capacity indeed does *not* take into (negative-)account those sectors, that have been remapped. So after real remaining capacity has dropped below original capacity, querying the "native" size still returns the original size, which is no longer physically backed. This is, I admit, practically irrelevant, because such drives should really be dumped before doing any harm to one's precious data, but please read further... > HPA simply allows the BIOS (or disk by jumper option) > to hide part of the drive early in boot so that it doesn't > confuse/break old OS/BIOS code, This pattern is probably of vanishing importance with modern BIOS's (caring less and less about too large disks) and old old OS's (being less and less runnable on modern hardware despite these kinds of hacks). > or to use it to hide things like windows reinstall images. I see it as a rational wish to not interfere with *these* reserved sectors (e.g. when installing linux parallel to windows), even for correctly working drives. I ask for a module/boot-option to allow to skip hpa-checks generally, or even for specific drives - to be used, if one needs to be sure that these reserved sectors of a connected drive are not going to be touched, even when re-partitioning the disk. Afterall that's why they are reserved in the first place. That said, it's surely good to be able to access them, if one desires so. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
