Re: [gentoo-user] Incredibly slow disk access

[Mark Shields]

On Jan 7, 2008 8:37 PM, Dale <dalek1967@×××××××××.net> wrote:

> William Kenworthy wrote:
> > Check the options for your chipset in the kernel - look at device
> > drivers and ata/... devices.  Looks like its just defaulted to the
> > minimum as it hasnt seen what chipset you are using.
> >
> > Also consider moving to libata - seems better where I have tried it.
> >
> > BillK
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 2008-01-08 at 02:26 +0200, Wayn0 wrote:
> >
> >> Hi All,
> >>
> >> I have installed gentoo on my laptop recently and I am having a huge
> >> problem with speed.
> >>
> >> The problem is the insanely slow disk access that I am getting.
> >>
> >> here is some output:
> >>
> >> manticore ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda
> >>
> >> /dev/hda:
> >>   Timing cached reads:   5702 MB in  2.00 seconds = 2857.11 MB/sec
> >>   Timing buffered disk reads:    6 MB in  3.37 seconds =   1.78 MB/sec
> >>
> >> manticore ~ # /etc/init.d/hdparm start
> >>   * Running hdparm on /dev/hda ...
> >>   HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
> >>     [ ok ]
> >>   * Running hdparm on /dev/hdd ...
> >>   HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
> >>     [ ok ]
> >>
> >>
> >> I read on a forum somewhere that this could be caused by the HAL daemon
> >> so I shut that down and no luck :-(
> >>
> >> Any ideas?
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >> Wayn0
> >>
>
> Also check that DMA is enabled.  If you have the wrong or no chipset
> selected in your kernel, it won't be there.  lspci may be a good one to
> check as well.
>
> Dang, that is slow tho.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
> --
> gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list
>
>
I'd also recommending after checking for the above, also check what level of
UDMA is set.  Try this:  hdparm -I /dev/hda | grep -i dma

Yours should say probably either udma3 or udma4.  My SATA-I drive is set to
udma5, for example:

hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i dma
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6

-- 
- Mark Shields