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Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:43:10 +0300
From: Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org>
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To: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com>
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Do we still need ATA disk CHS addressing?
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Julian H. Stacey wrote:
>> Julian H. Stacey wrote:
>>>> Have anybody seen ATA drive without LBA support in last years?
>>> Yes
>> What it is? Some ancient HDD or flash card?
> 
> I run 20+ assorted hosts from 4.11 to 7.2 Uni & Dual proc, i386 (real 386!)
> to 686 & amd64, so I guess I'm 
>   A) Pretty vulnerable to legacy scare.
>   B) A litmus tesst for a wider community of others, some  with older kit, 
>      not on lists or with bleeding edge latest hardware, but will 
>      get hit when stuff eg HCS gets declared legacy=dumped.
> 	(hardware@ & arch@ are more likely mostly high enders,
> 	lower percentage of legacy hardware users I guess)

Are you administering computer hardware museum? ;)

I have tested all drives I have and found none requiring CHS support.
Even most ancient 850MB HDD and 16MB CompactFlash card I have support
LBA. I have doubts that something even older that this is still working
in production and require system there to be upgraded to 8.x.

> If I have to pull the lid on 20/25 hosts, to check disk sticky
> labels, I will if I must, but could you please reccomend people
> syntax to run on 4 5 6 7 RELEASES to check if a host is susceptible ?
> 	(Yes I know 4 is declares dead, but I still have lots of
> 	hosts with it &         I suspect quite a lot of others do,
> 	be nice to know if any of those boxes are doomed to only
> 	upgarde to 7 not 8 )

`atacontrol cap adX` can show you if LBA is supported.

-- 
Alexander Motin