ASUS P4PE spurious hdparm -tT results...UPDATE

hi,

i'm still getting the same weird negative test results for the WDC WD800JB-00CRA1 drive on 2.4.21-pre6:

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   -3008 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  -1504 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

Hmm.. suspicious results: probably not enough free memory for a proper test.

however...i noticed that when i booted up with kernel 2.4.20-xfs_pre6 (the Gentoo 1.4rc3 LiveCD kernel), i didn't get strange test results.

the difference between the two seemed to be that the 2.4.20-xfs_pre6 kernel initialized the drive in mdma2 mode, and didn't support udma5 for the IDE layer in that version of the kernel. so maybe this is a bug that's crept in since 2.4.21 and better ICH4 support days?

the IDE layer in that version of the kernel is based on a version from www.linuxdiskcert.org, i'm not sure how different that is from the version Alan & c have been working on.

any ideas what may cause this, for just the WDC drive and not the IBM? both are on the same channel..

thanks,
leon.