On Friday September 22 2006 11:56 pm, Joel Rees wrote: > On 2006/09/23, at 11:30, Claude Jones wrote: > > What are you talking about? > > Good question. Like I said in my earlier post, the advice my be > outdated. For all I know it may not apply to Linux kernel and drivers > written after a certain year, probably before 1999 if that's the > case. I've never seen it myself that I know of, but then I've mostly > avoided MSWindows compatible hardware. And the companies I've worked > for have tended to not fully populate a channel. > > You could plug something like "master slave ata corruption" in a > search at Google and get some interesting reading, though. > > The sales guy at Pasokon Kobo over in Mikage a couple of years back > warned me against trying to use both master and slave at the same > time, but they admitted to not having much experience with Linux. In > the MSWindows universe they were familiar with, there were enough > reports of silent corruption they figured it was best to stay with > one channel, one drive, particularly when building RAID on ATA > controllers. > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but master and slave on a single channel > can't handle commands concurrently? What I recall reading was that it > was known that some companies' drivers for MSWindows were known to > fail to keep state straight between calls, but I remember reading > some guy who said that even the hardware would lose state in certain > situations. And the corruption would tend to be silent, no warnings > until it was too late. > So, some salesman told you something once, you bought into it, found a couple of references on the net that seemed to buttress your hypothesis, and you're suggesting that _I_ google something to corroborate your salesman-informant's theory. I have no doubt that there could have been problems at times with Master/Slave configurations. Witness the current mess that is the USB protocol. It doesn't seem to me, however, that you have a lot to offer to back up what was a pretty strong assertion on your part. > > I have been building my own machines since 1989,..... > > MSWindows or Linux? BSD? Mac? Controllers limited to certain > manufacturers? Did the usage patterns tend to be such that only one > drive was used at a time, as in boot and run this drive or that, only > use the other drive for backups performed during break? Can you > guarantee there was no silent corruption? (regular diffs between > backups or such?) > Again, you seem to want me to buttress your salesman's theory. And that question about "silent corruption" is pure moxy... > > Yet, in all that time, with all those machines, I've never encountered > > problems with drive conflicts, except ones I've caused myself due > > to improper > > jumpering. For the second time in a month on this list, someone has > > alluded > > to such problems but with no details. What sorts of problems have > > you had? I > > would like to know in case I encounter such in the future. > > Like I say, I have not seen drive failures I can pin on this > particular issue. What I know is second hand, from the web...... So, you haven't seen this problem you declared to exist so forcefully, and you've only read about it "second hand, from the web" - My suggestion - first activate brain, then once it's spun up to speed, engage fingers... As some one said the other day .net stands for 'not entire true'... -- Claude Jones Brunswick, MD, USA
