This theory is backed by my observation of a nearly-broken disk,
that the quantity "3)" gradually goes down one step after some time.
The first such step was, when I noticed the problem about half a
year ago, and just recently it stepped down by another one.
The point I'm really trying to make is, that there should be a
boot option, to disable the query for "1)". This *must* be a
boot option, because the querying that I want to be able to
prevent happens at boot time.
My broken drive surely doesn't justify the option (or even this
thread), but the third one of the "uses for 3)" mentioned above
does. Once the native size is read, I no longer know how many
sectors were previously "hidden away" by HPA, except by checking
the kernel-log.
While Alan has already said, why he thought that this was the
wrong approach, the reasoning was based on a misunderstanding
of my question, which I here tried to clear up.