---------------------------
>Joern Engel (joern@logfs.org) on 1/6/09 wrote:
>>
>>Everyone agrees that hard disks are block devices, not
>>byte devices. If you decided to write byte-aligned to
>>a hard disks, you would get problems as well.
>
>I'm not arguing for byte-addressability.

Neither am I. But you seem to ignore the core of my argument. Maybe
I am just bad at explaining myself.

We both agree that we need "some sane abstraction" between the device
and the host system. What we disagree on is that 512B sectors are the
only abstraction that makes sense or even the abstraction that makes
most sense.

The main (only?) argument in favor of 512B sectors is legacy - those
30odd years of existing software we would lose if the abstraction
changed. And there are arguments in favor of a different abstraction,
which is basically "large eraseblocks, wear leveling in software".
The device firmware can save effort (obviously). But more
importantly, the host software has to pay less than the device
firmware saves.

And so far I have seen nothing in your argument that gives good
technical reasons why 512B sectors are "that one good abstraction".
They are "one possible decent abstraction", yes. No need to argue
that point any further, I agree.