Re: Reducing HDD writing affect on whole system.
Thank You for Your time and answer, Martin:
>How do you copy the file? Maybe the method you use for copying uses
>small buffers and thus needlessly generated disk seeks. You might try
>using dd with bs=1M ;).
I do this w/ mc.
But w/ dd it is the same.
>> I ran OpenArena that freezed from time to time, say I had 15 secs of
>> playing then 3 secs of freeze, then game farther continues.
>
>It might have just be waiting for something on disk? The CPU does not
>seem to be fully loaded.
The 3D-game is just a bright demo of the problem - using other apps.
shows the same just less intensive.
[snipped]
>> >Then also include at least the following:
>> >
>> >- hdparm -I /dev/sda | egrep -i "(model|transport:|likely
>> >used|DMA:)" (replace sda by whatever your drive is)
>>
>> Model Number: Hitachi HTS547575A9E384
>>
>> Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II
>> Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6; Revision: ATA8-AST
>> T13 Project D1697 Revision 0b
>
>I guess thats an 3.5 inch drive? (Don´t want to bother with looking up
>the model...). For a laptop drive above numbers could make some sense.
>Is it a 7200 or 5400 rpm drive? This could have an influence, since
>seeks could have been involved.
No. 2.5", 5400 RPM - still I do not believe it can be satisfiable
performance for the drive.
>> Capabilities:
>> LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
>> Queue depth: 32
>> Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific
>> minimum R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
>> Advanced power management level: 128
>> DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
>> *udma6 Cycle time: min=120ns
>> recommended=120ns PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3
>> pio4 Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow
>> control=120ns
>
>Thats nice, the kernel is using DMA for accessing the drive.
And probably, the highest? What can be a problem...
>> >- lspci -nn | egrep -i "(ide|sata)"
>>
>> SATA controller [0106]: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5
>> SATA [1002:4380]
>>
>> IDE interface [0101]: ATI Technologies Inc
>> SB600 IDE [1002:438c]
>
>Now there might be an issue. I don´t know how good this SATA
>controller works.
OK. Then my problem can be cured by replacing the laptop only, - I do
not think the drivers will be any better since long time has passed
from the manufacture date?
>> >- grep -i "model name" /proc/cpuinfo
>>
>> AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-52
>
>Or do you happen to do this on a laptop drive?
Do what?
>Then this might explain this issue as well... laptop drives aren´t the
>fastest.
Even w/ such huge freezes/delays?!
>So my suggestions:
>
>- try to reduce the trigger on when the kernel starts to writeback data
How do I do this?
>- try to use ionice with the IDLE priority for the copy process
Is it manually or some tunable util.s aare available in the system?
>- or use block i/o controller to limit the bandwith
How do I do this?
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