IDE tuning - How?

IDE tuning - How?

[Paul Furness]

Hi.

Can anyone tell me how to tell the linux kernel that my IDE hard disk
and interface are ATA133 not ATA100?

I first noticed a problem after installing Debian on my development
system. The install took ages, but after the install the whole system
was very jerky and slow (this was on a P4 1.9G with lots of memory, so I
figured it wasn't CPU problems. Top confirmed this). Further
investigation showed that it was only slow when accessing the hard disk.
hdparm -t /dev/hda told me that it was going at between 3 and 4 M/s
which is scarily slow.

I looked carefully through the boot messages, and came across "assuming
IDE bus speed 33MHz. override with idebus=xx" (Sorry, the wording might
be a little different but the message was essentially that). I therefore
added "idebus=66" to my kernel boot up line in grub.conf, and sure
enough it booted and told me "assuming IDE bus speed 66MHz." According
to hdparm, it is now giving me around 40MB/s, which is a definite
improvement.

So far so good. But then I noticed that is detects the hard disk as
ATA100. I know it's a 133, as I only bought it recently and I know what
model I bought (Diamond max +9 120GB ATA133). I am assuming (possibly
naively) that if the IDE module in the kernel is only using 100, I'm
only getting about 66% of the performance I should. ( I know, nothing's
ever linear...)

I tried adding "ide0=ata133" to the kernel params, but it makes no
difference. The IDE code documentation doesn't seem to help beyond
telling me to do what I have already tried.

Am I missing something obvious?


Paul.

Re: IDE tuning - How?

[Jamie Harris]

Don't you just want to do the idebus=133 append agagin or am I missing
something?  You IDE controller is capable of 133 yeah?  Not just 100?

cheers

Jamie...

> Hi.
>
> Can anyone tell me how to tell the linux kernel that my IDE hard disk
> and interface are ATA133 not ATA100?
>
> I first noticed a problem after installing Debian on my development
> system. The install took ages, but after the install the whole system
> was very jerky and slow (this was on a P4 1.9G with lots of memory, so I
> figured it wasn't CPU problems. Top confirmed this). Further
> investigation showed that it was only slow when accessing the hard disk.
> hdparm -t /dev/hda told me that it was going at between 3 and 4 M/s
> which is scarily slow.
>
> I looked carefully through the boot messages, and came across "assuming
> IDE bus speed 33MHz. override with idebus=xx" (Sorry, the wording might
> be a little different but the message was essentially that). I therefore
> added "idebus=66" to my kernel boot up line in grub.conf, and sure
> enough it booted and told me "assuming IDE bus speed 66MHz." According
> to hdparm, it is now giving me around 40MB/s, which is a definite
> improvement.
>
> So far so good. But then I noticed that is detects the hard disk as
> ATA100. I know it's a 133, as I only bought it recently and I know what
> model I bought (Diamond max +9 120GB ATA133). I am assuming (possibly
> naively) that if the IDE module in the kernel is only using 100, I'm
> only getting about 66% of the performance I should. ( I know, nothing's
> ever linear...)
>
> I tried adding "ide0=ata133" to the kernel params, but it makes no
> difference. The IDE code documentation doesn't seem to help beyond
> telling me to do what I have already tried.
>
> Am I missing something obvious?
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin"
> in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


-- 
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Re: IDE tuning - How?

[Paul Furness]

Yeah, the controller does do 133. I tried idebus=133 but it isn't
recognised by the ide code as a valid option.

However, hdparm _might_ do what I wanted, I just didn't realise it; I
added "hdparm -X70 /dev/hda" to my startup script and it _appears_ to
have made things go faster. On the other hand, an hdparm -t still shows
the same transfer rates as before. 




On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 12:39, Jamie Harris wrote:
> Don't you just want to do the idebus=133 append agagin or am I missing
> something?  You IDE controller is capable of 133 yeah?  Not just 100?
> 
> cheers
> 
> Jamie...
> 
> > Hi.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me how to tell the linux kernel that my IDE hard disk
> > and interface are ATA133 not ATA100?
> >
> > I first noticed a problem after installing Debian on my development
> > system. The install took ages, but after the install the whole system
> > was very jerky and slow (this was on a P4 1.9G with lots of memory, so I
> > figured it wasn't CPU problems. Top confirmed this). Further
> > investigation showed that it was only slow when accessing the hard disk.
> > hdparm -t /dev/hda told me that it was going at between 3 and 4 M/s
> > which is scarily slow.
> >
> > I looked carefully through the boot messages, and came across "assuming
> > IDE bus speed 33MHz. override with idebus=xx" (Sorry, the wording might
> > be a little different but the message was essentially that). I therefore
> > added "idebus=66" to my kernel boot up line in grub.conf, and sure
> > enough it booted and told me "assuming IDE bus speed 66MHz." According
> > to hdparm, it is now giving me around 40MB/s, which is a definite
> > improvement.
> >
> > So far so good. But then I noticed that is detects the hard disk as
> > ATA100. I know it's a 133, as I only bought it recently and I know what
> > model I bought (Diamond max +9 120GB ATA133). I am assuming (possibly
> > naively) that if the IDE module in the kernel is only using 100, I'm
> > only getting about 66% of the performance I should. ( I know, nothing's
> > ever linear...)
> >
> > I tried adding "ide0=ata133" to the kernel params, but it makes no
> > difference. The IDE code documentation doesn't seem to help beyond
> > telling me to do what I have already tried.
> >
> > Am I missing something obvious?
> >
> >
> > Paul.
> >
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin"
> > in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

Re: IDE tuning - How?

[Christian Reis]

On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 12:39:23PM +0100, Jamie Harris wrote:
> Don't you just want to do the idebus=133 append agagin or am I missing
> something?  You IDE controller is capable of 133 yeah?  Not just 100?

Even so, idebus=133 is probably incorrect, and it is *NOT* related to
ATA133. It specifies the speed of the PCI bus the IDE controller is
connected to. 

For most PCs it's 33Mhz (my Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard, which is
fairly recent (2y) included). 66Mhz is available in certain high-end
workstations AFAIK, but I've never knowingly used one.

Take care,
--
Christian Reis, Senior Engineer, Async Open Source, Brazil.
http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331 | NMFL