On 1 Nov 2002, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:

> Specifically, I've been working on a fairly simple device that can be
> placed between an IDE drive and an IDE cable.  (There's nothing specific
> to IDE here; it is just the mostly commonly used interface at the
> moment.)  This device has a table, stored in non-volatile memory, which
> marks physical disk blocks as read-only.  Then, any write request for
> one of these blocks never arrives at the drive.

Wouldn't an easier approach be to put all the read-only files onto a
separate hard drive and then cut the write line? A second hard drive isn't
particularly expensive, and would be much easier than compiling a block
list and storing it in NVRAM.

-- 
Gillette - the best a man can forget