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Subject: Re: Guidance on conflicts between GNU GRUB and proprietary software
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On 9/28/2010 12:18 PM, Colin Watson wrote:
> This is not true.  GRUB has an ata module which can be built into
> core.img if necessary to read data from parts of the disk the BIOS can't
> read.  It's not really solid enough to use by default, but people do
> occasionally report success with it.

But when it isn't done by default, or automatically when needed, then
you aren't any better off putting the core in the embed area by default.
 If they are smart enough to build a custom core with the ata driver,
surely they can also put the core in the embed area as well.

To put that another way, just because an ata core needs to be in the
embed area to get around broken bios, does not mean that a biosdisk core
does.