This message is from the T13 list server.

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002 13:54:13 -0800, McGrath, Jim wrote:
>This message is from the T13 list server.
>
>going forward it's not even clear that ECC will be linked with 512 byte
>sectors.

When I make my first "large physical sector" proposal I asked the T13
members to think about this and how they would continue to support
R/W Long testing. 

Lets assume the current R/W Long scheme (Harlan's implementation or
something similar) is used but the sectors are 4K bytes and there are
up to 500 bytes of ECC data. Anyone want to estimate how long it
would take just to walk a single "bad bit" though such a sector+ECC.
Then how about walking a 2 "bad bits"? Or combinations of multiple
errors? I'm not sure any of us would live long enough to see such a
test complete (even if you could find a computer system that could
run that long!).

A question for those of you that buy disk drives... When you purchase
a disk drive don't you assume that someone has verified that the
drive's microprocessor(s) and buffer memory function correctly?
(There has never been a way to test a microprocessor in a drive from
a host system.) If you need to test a drive's ECC logic from the
host, then why don't you also need to test the drive's microprocessor
and buffer memory too from a host? Why the "double standard"?



*** Hale Landis *** www.ata-atapi.com ***



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