On Wednesday 02 June 2004 19:00, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>Hi, Jon,
>
>on Donnerstag, 03. Juni 2004 at 00:48 you wrote to amanda-users:
>
>JL> On Solaris x86, one thing that terribly degrades IDE disk
>JL> performance is if the driver does not use dma but uses pio mode.
>JL> There are even reports of diagnostic tools saying the drive is
>JL> using dma, but digging deeper determines that pio mode is in
> use.
>
>JL> I know not how to check or configure the HD driver on linux,
>JL> but it might be something to check.
>
>OT:
>
>hdparm may help.
>
>Try
>
>hdparm -i /dev/hdX
>
>(substitute X with the fitting char for your prim/sec Master/Slave
>whatever ....)

And then to measure how fast that drive can go, do "hdparm 
-tT /dev/hdX"

It should look something like this:
[root@coyote root]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   920 MB in  2.01 seconds = 458.47 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.00 seconds =  56.58 MB/sec

Thats a fairly fresh drive, older ones will be a little slower.

Extended study of 'man hdparm' can be enlightening.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.