Increasing HD Speeds...

[Bradmont2]

Doing an hdparm -t /dev/hd[a/b] gives me transfer rates just under 4 mb/second on both of my harddrives... I'm pretty sure this is lower than it should be... can anybody tell me how to get them running at optimal speeds?

[bkurt]

Just read the man page for hdparm and that will explain all. There is also a pretty good NHF on this. Check it out at http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hdtweak.html

[DrDebian]

Originally posted by Bradmont:
<STRONG>Doing an hdparm -t /dev/hd[a/b] gives me transfer rates just under 4 mb/second on both of my harddrives... I'm pretty sure this is lower than it should be... can anybody tell me how to get them running at optimal speeds?</STRONG>

Installing ReiserFS might help speed up things considerably... :eek:

[godot]

compile kernel 2.4.* and enable DMA support and PIIxn chipset tuning, you'll see it in the options somewhere.

then you can hdparm -d1 /dev/hd* and get some great speeds.

[Bradmont2]

Whoa... that helped... took them up to 23.5 & 30... thanks ;)

Now, will these changes be kept, or do I have to redo whenever I reboot?

[bkurt]

The easiest way to do it is to just put the commands in your rc.local file so they are applied every time you boot up. And you will need to add -k1 to your hdparm command to keep it. Here are the hdparm commands from my rc.local:

hdparm -d1 -c1 -m16 -k1 /dev/hda
hdparm -d1 -c1 -m16 -k1 /dev/hdb

The -d is to set the dma flag on, the -c is to enable 32bit I/O. The -m sets multiple sector I/O on and the -k as I said above keeps the settings. Hope that helps.

[Bradmont2]

Thanks :)