Hard Disk Failure

aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net
Sun Feb 26 20:00:02 EST 2006


   From: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>
   Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:31:28 -0500

     From what I understand, many drives have additional diagnostics and
   commands in addition to the standard "read block X" stuff.  However,
   these commands are manufacturer-specific.

Sometime during 2.4, the kernel gained an ability to talk to IDE
devies in a "raw" mode.  Though the kernel support exists, I haven't
seen any tools which actually use it to talk to drives directly. :)
Here's an excerpt from linux-2.4.20/Documentation/Configure.help:

> Raw Access to Media
> CONFIG_IDE_TASK_IOCTL
> This is a direct raw access to the media.  It is a complex but
> elegant solution to test and validate the domain of the hardware and
> perform below the driver data recover if needed.  This is the most
> basic form of media-forensics.
> 
> If you are unsure, say N here.
> 
> Use Taskfile I/O
> CONFIG_IDE_TASKFILE_IO
> This is the "Jewel" of the patch.  It will go away and become the new
> driver core.  Since all the chipsets/host side hardware deal w/ their
> exceptions in "their local code" currently, adoption of a
> standardized data-transport is the only logical solution.
> Additionally we packetize the requests and gain rapid performance and
> a reduction in system latency.  Additionally by using a memory struct
> for the commands we can redirect to a MMIO host hardware in the next
> generation of controllers, specifically second generation Ultra133
> and Serial ATA.
> 

--
  "So many people like XML because so few people understand Scheme."



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