On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 11:21:49AM -0400, Eric Sproul wrote: > Hi all, > I am having a problem with disk I/O on a new holdingdisk I installed in > my AMANDA server. The server had previously been exclusively SCSI, and > I had no problems. When we broke down an old server, I snagged a 60GB > IDE drive (an IBM Deskstar 75GXP) to use as cheap extra holding disk > space-- "free" as opposed to ~$450 for a similar-sized SCSI drive. The > problem is, the read throughput is terrible and it's causing backups to > run about twice as long, due to taper not being able to extract stuff > off the holding disk fast enough. > > The AMANDA server is PC-based, with Tyan Thunder 100 (S1836) mobo and > the i440GX chipset (PIIX4 integrated IDE controller). According to the > manual, the IDE controller should do up to ATA/33 (UDMA mode 2, I > believe). It's running Debian testing/unstable, with kernel 2.4.21. > > Anyway, I plug the drive up, setting the BIOS to auto-everything for IDE > disks. I see the disk come up and get recognized. However, when the > kernel detects the IDE disk, it reports no UDMA setting, leading me to > believe it came up in one of the older PIO modes. This is confirmed > with a quick hdparm test that shows an abysmal 4.5 MB/s buffered disk > read speed. By comparison, the same disk at UDMA(33) in a similar > machine reports 28 MB/s. > > Does anyone here have experience with IDE and DMA under recent Linux > kernels? Anyone else have a problem like this? I figured the > integrated controller on a 440GX board would have no compatibility > problems, as it's extremely common. Maybe I'm wrong.
Not linux, but Solaris. I'm also on a 440 board, but I think BX. I have two SCSI disks and a chunk of each used for holding disk. I also have a larger IDE disk and used to use a chunk of that for holding disk too. But it proved too low performing so I dropped it except for storage of static data. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
