Celejar wrote: > On Wed, 21 Oct 2020 14:06:55 -0400 > > But I suspect that we now know why the DFT utility can't see it: > > because DOS can't see it, because DOS doesn't have any SATA > > support. The best that can be done is providing a virtualized > > interface, and that won't let you interrogate the disk. > > Ah, okay. Well, the BIOS does offer an IDE mode for the controller, but > even that doesn't allow DFT to work. Are you suggesting that that's > because it's not "real" IDE, but some kind of virtualized interface?
Yeah. IDE stands for "integrated drive electronics" and was essentially a wrapping of the 8-bit (and later 16-bit) PC/AT bus that fed into a controller mounted on the drive. The successor was called ATA, and later still redubbed PATA (parallel ATA) when SATA was invented. You've got a multiterabyte SATA drive. It speaks a 1.5, 3 or 6 Gb/s serial protocol with a command set that only looks like IDE if you run them both through a blender. For one thing, I'm pretty sure IDE couldn't handle more than... here's the doc: https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html The 528MB, 137GB, and 4.2GB limits are all coming into effect here, possibly others. -dsr-
