Re: tuning ide-scsi/usb drives

[csj <csj@zapo.net>]

At Sat, 20 Sep 2003 16:23:32 +0200,
martin f krafft wrote:
> 
> hdparm can make the difference between an IDE harddrive and
> something connected to the IDE bus which is about as fast as if
> I'd type the bits by hand. I am down with that, and my IDE
> drives are at paramount speeds.
> 
> I also have an IDE drive in a special bracket that connects via
> the USB bus and usb-storage makes it available through ide-scsi
> as sdx.  Performance is horrid!
> 
>   piper:/transfer> sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
> 
>   /dev/sda:
>    Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 72.58 seconds =902.95 kB/sec
> 
> But I can't fix that:
> 
>   piper:/transfer> sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/sda
> 
>   /dev/sda:
>    operation not supported on SCSI disks
> 
> Is there a better way to do this?

Have you tried the cat > /proc trick, something like:

cat using_dma:1 >  /proc/ide/hdX/settings

This works for my ide-scsi DVD-ROM drive.  Then again maybe what
you need is the "scsitools" package:

Description: Collection of tools for SCSI hardware management
 This package is a collection of tools for manipulating SCSI
 hardware:

  scsiinfo: displays SCSI drive low-level information and
            modifies SCSI drive settings,