My 2 cents:<br>
<br>
UDMA IDE hard drive parameters can be greatly optimized from the default settings in most Linux distributions. The most important parameters are DMA (direct memory access--which takes a lot of load off the processor) and 32-bit I/O.<br>
<br>
Type /sbin/hdparm for a short list of other tuning possibilities. For the full manual enter man hdparm.(q to quit, if you're not familiar with Unix manuals)<br>
<br>
do /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hdX (X=whichever drive you want to configure) This will test/benchmark your current settings.<br>
<br>
/sbin/hdparm -c /dev/hdX will tell you whether you are using 32-bit I/O support; 0 means no, 1 means yes. Do this with each of the parameters you want to try.<br>
<br>
/sbin/hdparm -c 1 /dev/hdX will SET your drive to use 32-bit I/O support, until you reboot or Linux resets the drive. (read info on -k parameter)<br>
<br>
To initialize the settings on reboot the commands need to be in /etc/rc.d/rc.local (works for Redhat) or some other initialization file, depending on your distribution.<br>
<br>
On another note, I'm not positive about this, but I believe having swap files on more than one drive speeds up virtual memory--essentially a RAID level 0 for virtual memory. Can enyone else confirm or dispel this notion?<br>
<br>
Enjoy your newfound speed; X-windows will fly.<br>
<br>
Rick Morris
<br>
UDMA IDE hard drive parameters can be greatly optimized from the default settings in most Linux distributions. The most important parameters are DMA (direct memory access--which takes a lot of load off the processor) and 32-bit I/O.<br>
<br>
Type /sbin/hdparm for a short list of other tuning possibilities. For the full manual enter man hdparm.(q to quit, if you're not familiar with Unix manuals)<br>
<br>
do /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hdX (X=whichever drive you want to configure) This will test/benchmark your current settings.<br>
<br>
/sbin/hdparm -c /dev/hdX will tell you whether you are using 32-bit I/O support; 0 means no, 1 means yes. Do this with each of the parameters you want to try.<br>
<br>
/sbin/hdparm -c 1 /dev/hdX will SET your drive to use 32-bit I/O support, until you reboot or Linux resets the drive. (read info on -k parameter)<br>
<br>
To initialize the settings on reboot the commands need to be in /etc/rc.d/rc.local (works for Redhat) or some other initialization file, depending on your distribution.<br>
<br>
On another note, I'm not positive about this, but I believe having swap files on more than one drive speeds up virtual memory--essentially a RAID level 0 for virtual memory. Can enyone else confirm or dispel this notion?<br>
<br>
Enjoy your newfound speed; X-windows will fly.<br>
<br>
Rick Morris