Re: PATA System Slowdown

[John Baab <john.baab@gmail.com>]

Now that I have both my PATA and SATA hard drives functional, I
decided to test the speeds that I am getting from both of them and
have found it surprising that my PATA is actually getting better
speeds than my SATA:

optimusprime:/home/john# hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:   80 MB in  3.00 seconds =  26.63 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate
ioctl for device

optimusprime:/home/john# hdparm -t /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  140 MB in  3.01 seconds =  46.55 MB/sec

Both hard drives are Western Digital 7200RPM.  The SATA is a 200GB
drive and the PATA is a 100GB drive.  My board is an Asus K8V SE
Deluxe, I am using the VIA IDE controller and the VIA SATA controller
(which I read on the list is supposed to be faster than the promise
SATA controller that is also on the board)

-John

On 6/14/05, Jeffrey Hahn <jmhahn@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/05, Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> > Jeffrey Hahn <jmhahn@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > On 6/14/05, John Baab <john.baab@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> > It has loaded the via82cxxx *after* the ide_generic module.  Hence the
> > >> > ide_generic driver (that doesn't allow DMA to be turned on) is being used.
> > >> >
> > >> > In /etc/modules put "via82cxxx" above ide_generic (if it appears), and reboot.
> > >> > If via82cxxx is the right module, DMA should be enabled.
> > >>
> > >> Worked like a charm, DMA is now turned on and system seems a lot more
> > >> stable.  My CPU usage still jumps, but there is a clear difference.
> > >>
> > >> -Thanks for all the help, John
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > > I've been having the same problem with the same board but modifying
> > > the /etc/modules was one of the first things I tried, and it still
> > > refuses to load the modules in the order given. dmesg still shows
> > > "Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2" loading
> > > immediately after the sata (sata_via), probing all the ide devices,
> > > then doing some ACPI stuff before my via82cxxx driver comes along and
> > > fails to load because none of the ide devices are still available.
> >
> > Blacklist it.
> >
> > MfG
> >         Goswin
> >
> 
> I was able to fix it by rebuilding the initrd as was hinted to by
> someone else off-list.
> 
>