IDE HPA

[Alan Cox]

On Gwe, 2005-09-02 at 14:09 -0400, Peter Jones wrote:
> (if there's already a straightforward way, feel free to clue me in --
> but the default should almost certainly be to assume the HPA is set up
> correctly, shouldn't it?)

The normal use of HPA is to clip drives to get them past BIOS boot
checks. The thinkpads come with a pre-installed partition table which
will protect the HPA unless the user goes to town removing it.

The ideal case would be that the partition table is considered at boot
to see if the HPA matches the partitiont table or not. You'd also then
need dynamic HPA enable/disable for installers and other tools to go
with that.

Send patches.