> Also, a feature Alan requests on occasion: Call the ATA "set max" > command to fully address the hard drive, including HPA. The Linux > standard is to export the raw hardware directly, making 100% of the > hardware capability available to the user (and, in this case, > Linux-based BIOS and recovery tools). I'll first study what this means, then start to work on it. Best wishes, Forrest
The below relates to PATA and HPA (Host Protected Area), but I assume it would be relevant to SATA as well. ==== This has been discussed before in the archives. I think the desired behavior was to have the Linux Kernel look for HPAs by default and to open the drive up to the full size via "set max" on boot, but to have a boot parameter to disable this behavior if desired. FYI: There is a userland tool called setmax floating around. (I can find if you're interested.) The userland tool works fine for LBA28 drives, but does not have LBA48 support. That may get to be an issue, but at least from my perspective, I have not yet seen any 128+ GiB drives with HPAs setup. I do occasionally see smaller drives with HPAs. FYI2: I do computer forensics and make dd images of drives routinely. As part of the process I double check if a HPA is present or not. I typically use the userland setmax tool to open it up if the linux kernel failed to do so on bootup for some reason. (I've only seen that a few times so far.) Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
