[Info-vax] Question about IDE disks

[JF Mezei]

Just as a sanity check.

With proprietary disks such as RA and DSSI, VMS had very good control
and more importantly notification of errors which would then show up in
the SHOW DEVICE output.

There was a phase in time where Alphas supported el-cheapo (made for
Windows PC)   IDE (now called ATA) disks.  (models such as DS10/DS10L
for instance).

Do those drives (and IDE protocol) give VMS the same level of
notification as previous generation of disk protocols ? Or do they
perform their own internal disk maintenance without bothering the OS ?

In other words, if an IDE disk is starting to make weird noises, does an
error count of 0 on the SHOW DEV provide some indication that the noises
have not resulted in problems with actual disk operation, or could the
disk already be seriously sick and just not reporting its problems to
the OS ?