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To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Another WTF moment
In-Reply-To: <1355691233.1198.126.camel@revolution.hippie.lan>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:08:12 -0800
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From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com>
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In message <1355691233.1198.126.camel@revolution.hippie.lan>, 
Ian Lepore <freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org> wrote:

>On Sun, 2012-12-16 at 12:01 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>> So, um, WTF?  One ST380011A is 156299375 sectors big, and the other one
>> is 156301488 big.
>> 
>> How exactly does this happen?
>
>Assuming the 3.06 and 3.54 are firmware revision numbers, one might
>speculate that ongoing testing showed higher sector failure rates than
>intially expected, and thus newer firmware sets aside a few more sectors
>as spares.

Well, as it turns out, no.

I did some more research and managed to find out that the discrepancy
is apparently due to the presence of a Host Protected Area (HPA) on the
first drive.

I don't know who or what created this HPA on that drive, but I do suspect
that it was Windoze.  (I have WindowsME and also Windows2000 partitions on
that drive, and both of those OSese were installed onto that drive at various
prior points in time.)

So anyway, nevermind.