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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:06:11 +0100
From: Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de>
To: Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl>
Cc: Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>,
       scott thomason <scott-kernel@thomasons.org>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: bio too big device
Message-ID: <20030312160611.GL834@suse.de>
References: <20030312090943.GA3298@suse.de> <Pine.LNX.4.10.10303120205250.391-100000@master.linux-ide.org> <20030312101414.GB3950@suse.de> <20030312154440.GA4868@win.tue.nl> <20030312155105.GJ834@suse.de> <20030312160218.GB4868@win.tue.nl>
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On Wed, Mar 12 2003, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 04:51:05PM +0100, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 12 2003, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:14:14AM +0100, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > 
> > > > So I still think it's much better stick with the safe choice. Why do you
> > > > think it's only one drive that has this bug? It basically boils down to
> > > > whether That Other OS uses 256 sector commands or not. If it doesn't, I
> > > > wouldn't trust the drives one bit.
> > > 
> > > I am not quite sure I understand your reasoning.
> > > We have seen *zero* drives that do not understand 256 sector commands.
> > > Maybe such drives exist, but so far there is zero evidence.
> > 
> > Have you read the thread? You are obviously mistaken.
> 
> Usually I am not, but I am happy to be corrected.
> Please point out the facts.
> 
> What I have seen is Paul Gortmaker, who reported on an old disk
> that showed errors with 256 sector transfers. In an early post
> he thought that that just was because the drive did not understand
> 256-sector transfers, in a later post he reported that in fact
> 256-sector transfers worked but that it was possible to
> provoke a problem by having heavy load for an hour with
> 256-sector transfers.
> 
> I have an old drive that works fine but after three crashes
> at 4 in the morning I decided that the load of updating
> the locate database was more than it could handle.
> Heavy load is something that kills many a machine.

Either the drive has the bug or not. I seriously doubt that 256 vs 248
sectors would put any extra strain on the drive.

If there's no real precedent wrt 256 sector bug in _any_ drive, then I'm
fine with that change. Remember that we _did_ have it that way for a
while, it was only changed back because of apparent problems. If those
problems turn out to be non-existant, then the error was changing it
away from 256 in the first place.

-- 
Jens Axboe

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