ISD 820 Knowledge Base

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====== Hard Drive: Host Protected Area ======

===== What is HPA =====
HPA (Host Protected Area) is a 'feature' (read: curse) of certain motherboards that is supposed to help recover from a corrupted BIOS.  At the time of this writing (Feb. 2011), only certain older Gigabyte motherboards are known to force an HPA on hard drives.  I don't know the exact cut-off date, but if you are using a Gigabyte motherboard manufactured before 2010 then you should definitely check to see if you have HPA on any of your drives.  Also, it is definitely possible to have an HPA from a previous motherboard.  If a drive has at any point in time been used with one of these HPA-inducing boards, then there's a good chance that it still has a vestigial HPA, even if it has been formatted since.

===== Check if HPA is enabled/disabled =====
<file>
hdparm -N /dev/[hs]d[a-z]
</file>


===== Enable or Disable HPA =====
==== For the output ====
<file>/dev/sdx:
max sectors   = 78125000/78165360, HPA is enabled</file>
==== Enable ====
<file>
hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing -N p78125000 /dev/sdx
</file>
==== Disable ====
<file>
hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing -N p78165360 /dev/sdx
</file>

===== Sources =====
  * [[https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=10866.0]]

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