VERY slow HDs activity.

trouby · 01-09-2004, 03:55 AM

Hey,

I have set software raid with two WD 80GB hard drives, both IDE.

They acts EXTERMELY slow, and when I run hdparm /dev/hda I get the following as a result:

Code:

/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  8 (on)
 geometry     = 9729/255/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0

Well, this is a new hardware, I guess it fully support dma/32-bit IO support, but for some reason, when I try to enable DMA i get the following:

Code:

root@emerald:/usr/src/linux# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 using_dma    =  0 (off)

Well, I guess the kernel does not allow to use DMA by default, and maybe the kernel doesn't recognize my motherboard. I have an INTEL server board (s845wd1-e), I didn't find anything kernel otpions about this MB.

Any help?
Thanks.

hw-tph · 01-09-2004, 06:07 AM

What kind of IDE cables do you use? If you use old IDE (non-UDMA/ATA) cables you will not be able to set the DMA transfer modes no matter what your kernel options are.

Håkan

trouby · 01-09-2004, 11:25 AM

New IDE cables, that is for sure.

poison · 01-09-2004, 12:42 PM

recompile your kernel...be sure to compile the following in...
ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support ---> IDE, ATA and ATAPI Block devices ---> [*]PCI IDE chipset support[*]Generic PCI IDE Chipset Support[*]Sharing PCI IDE interrupts support[*]Generic PCI bus-master DMA support[*]Use PCI DMA by default when available

regards