Archiving workstation hard drives

[Jules Richardson]

Al Kossow wrote:
> while 512 byte block scsi or ide interfaced mass storage devices now
> seem like the only things that ever existed, before the mid 80's there
> was no real block-level hard disc standard across manufacturers.

Actually, I've never needed to try this - but is it reasonable to expect a 
"modern" system to be able to archive (using dd) a SCSI drive that's been 
formatted to something other than a 512 byte block size?

There were a few systems about that used SCSI drives formatted to 256 byte 
block sizes, and I expect that 1024 byte blocks aren't unheard of either. 
(plus there are many more systems with ST506/412 drives and SCSI bridge boards 
that present something other than 512 byte blocks to the user)

I suppose dd should still cope OK - but the question's maybe one of whether 
the underlying SCSI drivers will cope...

cheers

Jules