I have found that modern CUPS printer support configuration tools under 
EL have a fairly complete data base of the drivers/parameters needed for 
vendor specific printers.
To some extent, this seems to include even reverse engineered data for 
printers for which the vendor will not provide any detailed public 
specifications and only provides proprietary "drivers" to the monopoly 
(and sometimes, Apple).

Given various comments and suggestions that have appeared concerning the 
proper Linux formatting/partitioning and use of some current SATA hard 
drives that no longer present the 512 byte standard to the operating 
system, could SL (or RH or something equivalent to the CUPS team or ...) 
provide a data base for drives similar to the CUPS one for printers? 
For example, during the initial installation of either a new drive or a 
new major release of the OS (e.g., going from EL 5 to EL 6), the drive 
partitioning/formatting utility would recognize the drive(s) in use and 
automatically set either acceptable or "optimal" parameters.

If such a data base exists, relevant URLs and/or RPMs would be appreciated.

Yasha Karant