Hard Disk Performance

Discussion in 'Technical' started by redstar, May 2, 2005.

  1. redstar

    redstar New Member

    I get the feeling that my hard disk is very slow. Is there a way I can verify and tune it?
     
  2. falko

    falko Super Moderator Howtoforge Staff

    You can use hdparm to tune your hard disk. On Debian, you would run

    Code:
    apt-get install hdparm
    to install it.

    Code:
    hdparm --help
    shows a list of all available options. To get more information about your hard disk, run

    Code:
    hdparm -i /dev/hda
    This will look like:

    Code:
    /dev/hda:
    
     Model=MAXTOR 6L060J3, FwRev=A93.0500, SerialNo=663214759549
     Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
     RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=32256, SectSize=21298, ECCbytes=4
     BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=1819kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
     CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117266688
     IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
     PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
     DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
     UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
     AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
     Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 1:
    
     * signifies the current active mode
    To see how fast your hard disk currently is execute

    Code:
    hdparm -tT /dev/hda
    The output:
    Code:
    /dev/hda:
     Timing cached reads:   972 MB in  2.00 seconds = 486.00 MB/sec
     Timing buffered disk reads:   72 MB in  3.08 seconds =  23.38 MB/sec
    Now you can run
    Code:
    hdparm -c1 -d1 -X 66 /dev/hda
    to tune your hard disk. The X flag stands for the transfer mode (PIO: 8; DMA: 32; U-DMA: 64) + the number of the mode (2 for udma2: 64 + 2 = 66).

    Now run
    Code:
    hdparm -tT /dev/hda
    again, and if you're lucky, your hard disk should have become "faster".
     

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