IDE disk slow? There's help...

From: Michael Kwasigroch (mkwasigr@intercope.com)
Date: Fri Oct 20 2000 - 08:29:53 EST


Hi,

I recently bought a 40Gig IBM ATA100 disk as a replacement for a dying 4G
SCSI disk. I knew I was risking some trouble because I have an about 4 year
old triton 2 board (Intel 430HX) and I didn't want to risk more trouble
(and spend more money) by using a proprietary PCI IDE controller board. But
the disk was dead cheap and really big so I bought it and connected it as
the primary master on the onboard controller and...

Linux (stock 2.2.17) could ony push about 2.6 MB/s "through" it (hdparm -Tt
/dev/hda)... :-(

The scsi disks can do about 5.5 - 6.1 MB/s (8Bit fast SCSI, no ultra,
adaptec 2940 PCI).

So I tried to enable IDE DMA, 16 bit data transfers, no use. That was quite
disappointing but I gave up until yesterday when I (again) searched

   http://www.linux-ide.org

I got the latest 2.2.17 ide-patch, made a new kernel and voila:

My new IDE disk now "flies" at about 9.2 MB/s and really outperforms the
scsi disks!!!

ABOUT 3.5 PERFORMANCE GAIN! FOR FREE!!! Unbelievable, but the truth with
free software...

One thing I don't understand: Why is this patch not in the stock kernel? It
should (positively) affect lots of people, or am I missing something?

P.S.: Please email me directly, I'm not subscribed to any Linux list.

PPS: Beware 33+ Gig IDE disks if you have an Award 4.51 BIOS and want to
boot from it.
     You will **NOT** be able to boot from disks >33G due to a BIOS bug.
     See
         http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/bios338gb.htm
     and
         http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/hddfaqs.htm
     for details.

Enjoy.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen / best regards

Michael Kwasigroch
FaxPlus/Open Development
________________________________________

eMail: mkwasigr@intercope.com

INTERCOPE GmbH

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