This message is from the T13 list server.
The following statements are NOT true. 1. I think you're missing the point. For more than a decade ECC fields have been longer than 4 bytes. Basically the READ/WRITE LONG commands have not been valid for their original purpose for at least that long, probably longer. Indeed, I don't think they have been valid since drive manufacturers began integrating the controller onto the drive (i.e. the entire lifetime of the ATA standard, going back to ATA 1). Note - ECC lengths of greater than 4 bytes were not prevalent until quite some time (3 or 4 years minimum) after the IDE came into existance. 2. Remember that ATA was a standardization of what was originally a vendor unique interface developed in the days when controller boards and HDDs were separate devices (i.e. the early 80's). At that time such a function make sense. When the two were combined, this original purpose lost its meaning. Note - Testing of correction spans and limits continued way beyond this point. Additionally, with the use of vendor unique commands, ECC testing has remained valid. 3. Actually, all HDD ECCs are vendor unique - their length is not standard, and going forward it's not even clear that ECC will be linked with 512 byte sectors. And unless you know the codes being used, trying to test it is pretty useless (the drive itself, and certainly the manufacturing process, does a better job). Note- Again with vendor unique commands, ECC testing remains valid. No one has time in the manufacturing process to do anything more than verify basic funcrtionality of ECC. Furthermore the following statement is easily disputable with the following two examples. If Intel had taken the approach of the ATA committee, software would have become obsolete with each new generation of processor. If IBM had taken this approach, the big box would not still be alive after 30 years as their software would have been repeatedly obsoleted. It is only the NIH, politics, and short sightedness of the ATA committee that has prevented a drive that ran in 1990 or EVEN from 1986 from being able to be put on a 2002 PC. If anything, the ATA committee is way too slow in obsoleting functions!
