Re: Benefits from computing physical IDE disk geometry?

[Alan Cox]

On Sul, 2003-04-13 at 19:24, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> Now given these discs have processors on board isn't it about time
> someone improved the disc interface standards to push some of the
> intelligence drivewards?  I guess with enough intelligence the drive
> could do free block allocation and could do things like copying blocks
> around for you.

I wish it would. Most of the research and stuff so far has either put
the file system into the disk firmware (upgrade hell). Having a disk
which talked entirely about

	read(handle,offset, length)
	write(handle, offset, length)
	alloc(handle, near_handle, length, otherhints...)

might well work out rather better. It also allows the disk to do fairly
major relayout of data as it learns usage.