Quote:

This normally means that the device driver gets an error code back when it tries to spin up the disk (from the kernel). However, in this case, it's the boot loader trying to start the disk up and load the OS, so that's before any "intelligence" in the Linux device drivers kicks in.



Actually, it really is the (my) kernel device driver doing this. It simply sends an IDENTIFY_DEVICE command out the IDE ports, and if the drive responds it then follows up with other commands. At some point, the drive itself decides to spin-up, in response to one of those commands.

Cheers