From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz Subject: Re: libata PATA support - work items? Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:09:36 +0100 Message-ID: <58cb370e05010314092d421aee@mail.gmail.com> References: <006301c4ee5c$49e6a230$95714109@tw.ibm.com> <311601c9050101111929aef5ba@mail.gmail.com> <87f94c3705010312568b48d6e@mail.gmail.com> <311601c905010313201d5a02fa@mail.gmail.com> Reply-To: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.196]:43234 "EHLO wproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261926AbVACWJj (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:09:39 -0500 Received: by wproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 69so57854wri for ; Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:09:36 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <311601c905010313201d5a02fa@mail.gmail.com> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: Eric Mudama Cc: Greg Freemyer , Albert Lee , Jeff Garzik , IDE Linux , Doug Maxey , dan mares Hi, On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 14:20:40 -0700, Eric Mudama wrote: > On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 15:56:58 -0500, Greg Freemyer > wrote: > > I may be in the minority, but my company does computer forensics. We > > routinely connect old drives to Linux boxes and make dd images of > > them. > > > > We definately need CHS support at some level in the kernel. If this > > were ever dropped, we would have to quit using Linux for this job. > > > > FYI, there are hundreds if not thousands of companies that provide > > this service. The current standard for the industry is to perform > > these images from a DOS boot floppy, but using Linux is far superior > > in my mind and there is a small but growing body of professionals > > using Linux for Computer Forensic Imaging. > > Would it be a problem to keep any of the existing 2.4 or non-libata > 2.6 systems around? Since you're doing it now, I wouldn't expect it > to be a problem to keep them running so you can continue connecting to > very old hard drives. > > I'm simply trying to say that it'd be nice if future libata stayed > focused on non-CHS mode stuff, since CHS has been obsolete from the > ATA specifications for years. Revision 5 of the ATA-3 specification, > 6 October 1995, made LBA support mandatory for all disk drives > claiming support of that level of the spec. Over 9 years ago. > > Obviously, forensics and data recovery are cases where you might be > working with 9+ year old hard drive, but for that I would think we can > keep the existing PATA drivers around if maintaining an older system > wasn't an option, for those who need it. > > Would that work? Existing IDE drivers are not going away any time soon (not 2.6.x at least) and if/when this happens we shouldn't drop CHS support completely from the kernel - IMHO it is quite easy to add CHS support to libata. I also agree that libata PATA development should be focused on LBA but I don't see any problem in keeping CHS support around... Cheers, Bartlomiej