linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] msdos: add support for large disks

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Message-ID: <4B8EFC2A.8070303@zytor.com>
Date:	Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:17:46 -0800
From:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
To:	Daniel Taylor <Daniel.Taylor@....com>
CC:	OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@...l.parknet.co.jp>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] msdos: add support for large disks

On 03/03/2010 03:24 PM, Daniel Taylor wrote:
> 
> Those are good points.  We (WD) are trying to get the NDAs, regarding our
> specific not-yet-released products, in place to get the userspace utilities
> updated, and WD is also in communication with the Windows tool developers.
> 
> Fundamentally, though, the way Windows XP, which only supports MBR
> partitioning, can use a disk drive capacity larger than 2 TiB is with sector
> sizes larger than 512 bytes.  That is far too large a slice of the installed
> base for the disk drive makers to ignore, so these drives and partitions are
> going to be released, whether by WD, or someone else.  When someone plugs
> one of these disks into a system running Linux, we don't need to hear about
> "Linux doesn't support it", if there's a reasonable accomodation.  In this
> case, both the inputs MBR partitioning, and the data stored as a result, are
> fully capable.  It is only the intermediate variables in the module that are
> currently hard-coded to 32-bits, and which truncate the values.
> 

I should probably clarify that I was not, in any way, objecting to the
patch; quite on the contrary.

	-hpa

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