IDE HPA

[Molle Bestefich]

Alan Cox wrote:
> > If one does not care to use the HPA, one should disable it in the
> > BIOS entirely, so that everywhere (!) the entire disk is seen.
>
> And in the real world BIOSes don't get updated often
> by vendors let alone by users.

I meant the BIOS setup screen, not a firmware update...
Supposedly the BIOS can change the bounds of the HPA with special ATA commands..

Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Molle Bestefich wrote:
> > If HPA were exposed as /dev/.../hpa then it wouldn't be possible to
> > create such a filesystem. I'm guessing it's not possible with Windows
> > either, or with any BIOS-based OS.
> 
> Such filesystems already exist. Changing this behaviour now would break
> existing setups.

Not if, as proposed, there was a kernel switch to enable including the
HPA in the disc area.
Also those who has such filesystems {c,sh}ould disable HPA in their
BIOS (hopefully).