Hdparm Goes 8.1
Moving from version 7.7 to 8.1 gives users of the hard disk tool new options and new information displays.
Hdparm first moved to 8.0 and then to 8.1 on the same day. In contrast to 8.0 the identification function -I displays more information on ATA8 identification and outputs the device’s World Wide Name (WWN). Improvements in comparison to version 7.7 include support for the Libata driver for ATAPI drives on kernels before 2.6.24. SAT specification compliance for SCSI ATA Translation (SAT) was improved in version 6.9. In addition, the -A, -W and -M parameters have been modified to allow users to call them without arguments and thus display the current status. The --make-bad-sector, --repair-sector and --read-sector actions are new. The full extent of the differences between the versions becomes apparent when you read the Changelog for the download package; the website only seems to display the changes since the last release.
The Release announcement skips various versions. The last version available on Freashmeat was 6.9: the Hdparm project, which only has one main developer, does not seem to announce changes in good time, or at all, on Freashmeat. The version tree on the Sourceforge project page dates version 6.9 to October 2006, although nine version changes have occurred since. Opensuse and the RPM search portal Rpmseek offer version 7.7 and Debian.org shows 6.9 for the Etch release
Hdparm is available on the unmodified BSD license. The new 8.1 version is available from the Sourceforge page here as a zipped tar archive.
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