The block drivers know how big a device is. In fact mke2fs uses this
precise properly to make file systems
> beyond the physical limits will make the disk-drives unusable until it
> is low-level formatted. This is because subsequent READ CAPACITY command
> will fail. This happens with way too much regularity here.
IMHO the problem you have is quite different
> Some IDE drives have a greater problem than this. Once their device-
> specific information is gone, you can't do anything about it because
> they don't all allow low-level formatting.
IDE devices dont permit you to write blocks that dont exist. AFAIK nor
does SCSI. In the IDE case some vendors use magic enabling commands for
reading negative cylinders which either logically or really contain
all sorts of deep magic
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu