Re: libata PATA support - work items?

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 15:56:58 -0500, Greg Freemyer
[off-list ref] 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?

--eric