----- Original Message ---- > From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > Cc: Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> > Apparently, though unproven, at 17:34 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Grant > Edwards did opine thusly: > > On 2010-11-16, J. Roeleveld <jo...@antarean.org> wrote: > > >> spinrite claims to make the head do other things than what the drive > > >> firmware makes it do. > > > > I'm afraid I'll have to call bullshit on that. I don't see how some > > bit of PC software can make a drive head move. The firmware on the > > drive controller board is the only thing that can make the head move. > > Does spinrite claim they _replace_ the drive firmware with their own > > custom version? > > Firmware is nothing more than high-level software that wraps low-level > commands on the drive. High and low are to be taken here within the context > of > > a drive and it's controls, so don't be thinking it's on the same level as > fopen() > > > SOMETHING makes the head move. That something is the servos, and they are > under software control (how could it be otherwise?) If the registers and > commands that control that can be exposed, fine control is possible. The > firmware does not itself define the only things the head can do, in the same > way that a file system does nto define the only things that can be written > to
> a disk While I am no hard drive expert - I would suppose that only the firmware would have access to the registers and commands that actually control the internals of the hard drive; though it could be possible to utilize some lesser published functionality in the firmware, I would find it hard to believe that they would allow the internals of the hard drive to be controlled by anything other then their own software (e.g. the firmware). The primary responsibility of the firmware is to act as the control software and present the software interfaces that are desired - e.g. support the commands recieved via the hardware bus interface (e.g. PATA, SATA, etc.). There are probably some extra functions there for diagnostic purposes, but they are likely to be things only known by the manufacturer, things you could only expect software from the manufacturer to support or even possibly be aware of. In such case you wouldn't be bypassing the firmware - just using it in a slightly different, unpublished, manufacturer-only mode - user beware - e.g. firmware update. Thus I'd have to agree with the BS-call. Again, I am no hard drive expert. $0.02 Ben
