Dog slow IDE

For some reason the my IDE is running extremely slow (which accounts for why this box feels so sluggish).

hdparm gives:

/dev/hda:

Model=Maxtor 53073U6, FwRev=DA6207V0, SerialNo=K607RFNC Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=60030432 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
Drive Supports : ATA/ATAPI-4 T13 1153D revision 17 : ATA-1 ATA-2 ATA-3
ATA-4 ATA-5

/dev/hdb:

Model=MAXTOR 4K040H2, FwRev=A08.1500, SerialNo=572124112782 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=32256, SectSize=21298, ECCbytes=4 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2000kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78198750 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive Supports : ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 1 : ATA-1 ATA-2 ATA-3
ATA-4 ATA-5

Both drives claim to be using UDMA if I read the above correctly.

However:

/dev/hda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 16.27 seconds = 3.93 MB/sec

/dev/hdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 32.99 seconds = 1.94 MB/sec

1.94MB/sec is *way* to slow for a UDMA5 hard disk surely?

Tony

Hi!

What does haparm /dev/hda (without the -i) say? Is it using DMA at all? It may be set up for UDMA4 or UDMA5 but still run PIO only ... btw what chipset is this?

Vojtech

Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs

Judging by the pci ids database it's either an AMD Unknown or AMD Opus chipset.

hdparm says DMA is enabled (it's enabled by a script a bootup AFAIK).

Installing smartd seems to have helped a lot - it's jumped to 28MB/32MB which is a hell of a lot closer to what I was expecting (not sure if ATA133 should give 133MB a second or whether that's just a theoretical limit).

Not sure why enabling smart would help that much (I'm still working my way around the BIOS settings and the way to enable it was far from obvious - you have to do a manual config of the hard drive first).

Tony

"Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values." -- Norton SystemWorks 2002 Manual

[email protected] http://www.nothing-on.tv

Hi Tony,

Just a me too earlier today with 2.4.19-pre2-ac4, on a dual celeron 440BX-based system.

Im my case, I have 3 hdds in a raid-5, hda, hdb, and hdc.

hda and hdb were both performing as expected 18-22MB/sec. hdc was down at the 1.8-2.2MB/sec - even after trying to use hdparm to reset the drive transfer rates (-p, -d1 -X66, -d0 -X12 (to try pio) etc).

None of the attempts using hdparm altered the hdc transfer rate in any noticable fashion. I powered down the machine, and on reboot, the hdc transfer rate returned to the expected range 18-22MB/sec), and the raid performance went up to it's usual level from the 5MB/sec it was showing.

I couldn't see any reason for the odd behaviour, and I had put it down to 'just one of those things' as the 3 or 4 test reboots since haven't produced the strangely low-transfer rate again.

Cheers,

Mark

<snip>

Yes. On another system, I pull 35-40MB/sec off each individual barracuda IV drive, and 50+ from the combined raid array (I assume PCI bandwidth limited, as twiddling BIOS PCI settings boosted this from 41 to 50).

Regards,

Mark

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Mark Cooke                  The views expressed above are mine and are not
Systems Programmer          necessarily representative of university policy
University Of Birmingham    URL: http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~mpc/
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Are they dog slow after a *cold* start? My solution to slow Maxtor drives was to fix the CPU fans in my machine and put the main drive in a bay cooler.
The drive wasn't spewing bad data, so it wasn't the drive controller
overheating. That leads me to believe that the motor (or the motor control DSP) was overheating and degrading performance on that route. Trying that will save you lots of hours toying with hdparm like I did :).

Good luck..its a sucky problem but once you get it fixed your machine will seem like new!

akk~

Heck, the machine won't even boot after a cold start.... depending on the ambient temperature it can take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes to 'warm up'. I think this will be my last Asus board for a while...

Tony

"Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values." -- Norton SystemWorks 2002 Manual

[email protected] http://www.nothing-on.tv