On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Roman Mamedov wrote:

But then the 1.x+ metadata is still stored at the very end of the 
device, which makes it vulnerable to the HPA problem described above.

That's why I prefer v1.2 superblocks, it's stored safely away from MBR 
overwrites, but still not at the end.

Quoting "man mdadm"

1, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2
Use the new version-1 format superblock.  This has few 
restrictions.  The different sub-versions store the superblock at 
different locations on the device, either at the end (for 1.0), at the 
start (for 1.1) or 4K from the start (for 1.2).

I consider v1.0 and v1.1 as dangerous because of why you wrote, as well as 
accidental MBR writes.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se