Re: Very old IDE hard drive (240 MB) detected as 1.1 TB

[Sergei Shtylyov <sshtylyov@ru.mvista.com>]

Hello.

Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:

>>>   It has the current capacity in words 57-58 swapped:
>>>
>>> /dev/sdb:
>>> 0c5a 037f 0000 000a 8723 0275 0037 0030
>>> 000a 0000 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 424d
>>> 3948 4d31 5020 2020 0003 0040 0004 302e
>>> 3336 2020 2020 436f 6e6e 6572 2050 6572
>>> 6970 6865 7261 6c73 2032 3430 4d42 202d
>>> 2043 5033 3032 3534 2020 2020 2020 8010
>>> 0000 0001 0000 0200 0202 0001 037f 000a
>>> 0037 0007 82da 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
>>>
>>>
>>>   It must be 82da 0007, not 0007 82da.
>>>   IIRC, the IDE core doesn't trust the value reported in these words 
>>>       
>> ..
>>
>> That's right.  I wrote the IDE code that way
>> *specifically* due to a (different) Conner drive
>> I had here at the time.
>>     
>
>  It happened for some Maxtor drives too.  The reason is the ATA-1 spec was 
>   

   And with Fujitsu ones too. IIRC, the one I encountered (10+ years 
ago) had something like 0000 c000 there -- which in no way was related 
to its real capacity.

> not explicit about how words 57 and 58 were meant to be ordered and some 
>   
> manufacturers interpreted it one and some the other way.

   However, the drive vendors should've really thought better before 
reporting capacity in *middle-endian* format. :-)

>   Maciej
>   

MBR, Sergei