I just acquired a Kanguru 60G portable external drive. The drive supports
USB, Firewire and PCMCIA/CardBus interfaces, depending on which cable you buy.
Total cost was $273. I bought the PCMCIA/CardBus cable since it was the
easiest way to connect it to my Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop.
The PCMCIA (PC Card, whatever) cable has a switch for plain PCMCIA / CardBus
mode. When I tried it in CardBus mode Linux (RH 7.0) didn't recognize it,
Win98 did see it and installed a driver, but locked up soon after. Switching
back to plain PCMCIA mode it seems to work fine (but slow!) under both OSes.
Is there an hdparm equivalent for windows? I would like to see what modes
Kanguru's driver is setting. I did some experiments with hdparm and ended up
with an uninterruptible hdparm process that couldn't be killed.
Here's what I see now:
------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@granite ~ 4]# cardctl ident 1
product info: "Shining", "PMIDE-ASC", "Rev 1.04"
function: 4 (fixed disk)
[root@granite ~ 5]# hdparm /dev/hde
/dev/hde:
multcount = 0 (off)
I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 0 (off)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 7297/255/63, sectors = 117231408, start = 0
[root@granite ~ 6]# hdparm -i /dev/hde
/dev/hde:
Model=WDC WD600AB-00BVA0, FwRev=21.01H21, SerialNo=WD-WMA7E1602543
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=57600, SectSize=600, ECCbytes=40
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=-66060037, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117231408
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 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
[root@granite ~ 7]# hdparm -Tt /dev/hde
/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.09 seconds =117.43 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 44.70 seconds = 1.43 MB/sec
[root@granite ~ 8]#
------------------------------------------------------------
Not great :(
I wonder if there is any hope of CardBus support under Linux -- or win98 for
that matter :(
Any ideas about how to speed up this unit? It's usable as is for what I want
it for, but faster would be nicer. I suppose I could buy a Firewire PCMCIA
card (they make those, don't they?) and the Firewire cable for the drive.
-- Mark Polhamus
Mark Komarinski wrote:
> So I got bored enough to do some testing with external drives. SCSI is
> a bit expensive, USB is slow, and Firewire is still in progress.
>
> Firewire is the best choice of [USB, USB2, Firewire] as FW has a top
> speed of 400MB/s, and drivers are included with the more recent 2.4
> releases. USB tops out at 12Mb, USB2 is 480MB, but the drivers are only
> available in 2.5.x kernels. Also, availability of USB2 cards is more
> limited than FW, since you can usually find FW items in the
> Mac section of stores or catalogs.
>
> I picked up a Siig FW card (PCI, 3 external ports) for $39, and an ACOM
> 60GB external drive for $229. Like the external USB drives, these
> drives are not self-powered, meaning you have to have a spare power plug
> available. Fortunately, the power supply is built into the drive, so
> no bulky transformers. You can probably pick up the chassis alone
> and add your own IDE HDD or CD-R for about $99.
>
> Both USB and FW drives show up as SCSI drives, meaning you have extra
> overhead of going through the FW/USB drivers, then through the SCSI
> drivers, and so on.
>
> So here's some of the testing I have. System is a Celeron 700 running
> Debian with the 2.4.17 kernel. Latest IEEE1394 drivers from
> http://linux1394.sourceforge.net
>
> The first number of the result of hdparm -Tt is the timing of the cache
> to memory which doesn't appear to have much difference between the
> drives. The second number is what you actually want to pay attention
> to.
>
> IDE drive:
> # hdparm /dev/hda
>
> /dev/hda:
> multcount = 16 (on)
> I/O support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
> unmaskirq = 0 (off)
> using_dma = 1 (on)
> keepsettings = 0 (off)
> nowerr = 0 (off)
> readonly = 0 (off)
> readahead = 8 (on)
> geometry = 1216/255/63, sectors = 19541088, start = 0
> busstate = 1 (on)
>
> # hdparm -Tt /dev/hda
>
> /dev/hda:
> Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.10 seconds =116.36 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.56 seconds = 17.98 MB/sec
>
> Pretty impressive. Actually pretty good as I've got DMA turned on.
> With DMA turned off, I was getting about 3MB/s. Using multicount
> and I/O support does not have much effect, but I have them turned
> on anyway.
>
> Now for the USB drive. Just a plain 'ol USB chassis with a 30GB WD
> drive in.
>
> # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
>
> /dev/sda:
> Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.18 seconds =108.47 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 86.87 seconds =754.41 kB/sec
>
> Yow! Real slow. On the good side, I'm just storing MP3s on here. Here
> is also the reason why most USB 1.x CD-ROMs are limited to 4x
> (600kB/sec).
>
> Now for the Firewire drive. 400MB, here we come!
>
> # hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb
>
> /dev/sdb:
> Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.11 seconds =115.32 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 9.56 seconds = 6.69 MB/sec
>
> Hey! This is half as slow as IDE! What gives? Well, part of it is
> that I needed the latest drivers to work with the ACOM drive, otherwise
> the SCSI drivers think the drive is a scanner or printer. I also think
> some of the overhead of FW/SCSI drivers is another part.
>
> The thing to remember about this, though, is you can daisy-chain FW
> drives all you want. The external chassis I have has two FW ports on it
> so you can use multiple drives on the same FW chain, and using multiple
> drives at once will not cause the troubles that multiple drives on a IDE
> chain will.
>
> I would add some dd timings, but I'm using a mix of EXT3 and EXT2, which
> would taint the results somewhat. When I got all EXT3 (probably next
> time I get around to rebooting) I may try it.
>
> In the end, FW is a pretty nice way to expand the storage of your system
> without requiring a reboot (if you already have the drivers), not have
> to pay for SCSI prices, and not fool around with IDE drives. The cost
> to entry is pretty low (cards run from $39-$99, 60G drive for $229) and
> the performance is adequate and hopefully improving.
>
> -Mark
>
>
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