Re: Blockbusting news, results end

[jw schultz <jw@pegasys.ws>]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 02:57:27PM -0800, jw schultz wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 02:27:09PM -0800, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> > 
> > To date IDEMA has not released a formal spec for drive makers to switch to
> > 4Kb sectors.  If they have, then when running in compatibility mode, a
> > heavy read-modify-write happens to goto the pseudo sector of 512b.
> > 
> > Linux can not handled new IDEMA calls currently.
> 
> Irrelevant!

Andre, if you were trying to say what i am about to, i
apologise.

> I am assuming that these numbers are applicable (one is
> unknown):
> 	logical sector size == 512B
> 	physical sector size == ???B
> 	page size/filesystem block size == 4KB

I have dialoged with Eric Mudama.  He is 99% sure that no
manufacturer of is making ATA drives with physical sectors
larger than 512B.  I'll let that statement trump Norman
Diamond's until i hear otherwise.

The drive manufacturers would like to be able to go to a
larger physical sector but the read-modify-write is just too
scary.  If they could be sure of market acceptance of drives
that required all I/O to be in larger units they would build
them because it would allow greater capacity (and i'm
guessing speed as well) on the same physical hardware.
I look forward to the day with Linux has enough market-share
to influence the hardware manufacturers.

In any case, unless someone can authoritatively contradict
Eric we can ignore the firmware read-modify-write
implications of unreadable sectors.

End-of-subthread!
or in the words of Emily Latella "Never-mind".