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Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 14:00:09 +1000 (EST)
From: Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org>
To: HUMBUG General List <general at humbug.org.au>
Subject: [H-GEN] hdparm
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[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
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Hi all.

I was using hdparm to optmise access to an IDE drive recently and it
occured to me that some members of HUMBUG may not have used this little
gem.

Linux is quite conservative about the settings it uses for hard drives by
default.

It is possible to greatly improve performance my tweaking the paramters of
the drive, but it is important to know that it is possible to cause
serious filesystem corruption if you do something the drive doesn't like.

I must stress this is a _serious_ warning.  People just like us _have_
lost data doing this stuff.  Data loss is overall rare using hdparm but it
is an ever-present danger when playing with the drives like this.

Do not try the things below unless you have backed up the data,
preferrably totally away from the machine.  If the only backup you have is
on the machine then make sure the backup is on a _different_ IDE channel,
as some hdparm commands can get heard by both drives on the channel and
trash the lot. 

Ok, so you now understand what is at stake and have made a backup of all
that data that you have lovingly crafted.

Install hdparm is you don't have it installed already.

Read the man page carefully.  Again observe the warnings splashed
liberally through the file.

Use hdparm /dev/???  and hdparm -i /dev/??? to see how your drive is
currently configured and how you might improve performance.

I have recently used the following switches on a number of different
drives and had no trouble.  Performance has definately improved.

hdparm -m16 -u1 -W1 /dev/hda

YMMV.

Good luck.
Rob

-- Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
   Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://www.li.org)
   blake: up 7 days, 21:59,  1 user,  load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
   "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah


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