Re: Unacceptable HDD performance
On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Aryan Ameri wrote:
> Hi there:
>
> I am running a ThinkPad A31 (1 year old) notebook with 256 MB of RAM,
> and a 1.8 Ghz Pentium-M processor. While this is by no means a cutting
> edge system, it is still nevertheless an acceptable system.
>
> However the system is really under-performing, and it is completely
> apparent to me that the bottleneck is the HDD. Put it this way, it
> seems my internet connection is faster than my hard disk because
> whenever I start downloading 600 KBps or more, the hard disk light
> just remains on (which means it is under heavy load) and at that point
> my system becomes useless until I stop one of the connections and
> downgrade my speed. Also, I can't seem to burn CDs with more than 3x
> speed, because again the bottleneck seems to be the HDD.
>
> I have heard now and again, that notebook HDDs are slow, but this
> particular model was a high-end model last year, and I made sure that
> it uses the best HDD available in the market. I can't believe that it
> is THIS slow.
>
> Before complaining to IBM about a faulty HDD, I just want to ask if
> there is anything I can do to boost HDDs performance; via software. I
> have never run any other OS on this machine (I run sid) so I want to
> make sure that this under-performance isn't related to the OS.
> Precisely, I am asking to see if there are any softwares, or tricks,
> which can boost the performance of the hard disk.
>
Check the memory use, may be it is just that you are out of memory and the
system is using virtual memory.
Xavier
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