Suse Linux and only UltraDMA/33?

KeTZer · 11-23-2005, 04:18 PM

Hi,

something that always confused me with my OS is that the DMA-Mode Yast-Utility always tells me that my drives are running in UltraDMA/33.
This is a modern machine, so it should use UDMA 100 or 133 I think. At least the HD.
It also doesn´t offer any other options than "DMA off, DMA on, DMA16, UDMA16, UDMA33". I this normal or a compatibility prob with my board?
It´s not that I have speed issues with my system, but it confuses me.

I also tried to set my HD to UDMA Mode6 (UDMA-100) with "hdparm -X 70 /dev/hda", but it doesn´t change anything. Is this because I only set the drive to udma100 with this and not the controller?

Here´s my hdparm output for my HD:

Quote:

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 19457/255/63, sectors = 312581808, start = 0

Hope someone can help me or at least tell me what I miss on that.

Thx in advance,
KeTZer

slantoflight · 11-23-2005, 11:42 PM

First off, are you using atleast parallel ATA 80 pin cable? Because If you're using 40 pin, the highest mode you can go to is UDMA 2 which I think is the same as 33. Alot of modern computers still have 40 pin cable even though the harddrive itself is capable of more.

Lim45 · 11-24-2005, 03:05 AM

From my limited experience of Suse, It would not surprise me if YAST was misreporting the actual speed. Just out of curiosity, run

Quote:

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

and post the results. It might be useful to tell us a little about your machine, as well.

KeTZer · 11-24-2005, 09:17 AM

I´m using 80-pin of course.
I wouldn´t be surprised either if this wasn´t the actual speed (being misreported).

Here´s the output:

Quote:

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 2636 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1317.92 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 78 MB in 3.05 seconds = 25.59 MB/sec

I´m not really sure why you want that output as a normal hd won´t use more than 33mb/s (except for raid, but that uses more than one channel normally), so it actually says nothing.

The controller is the onboard one of the MSI K8TNEO2-FIR, the hd is a samsung spinpoint SP1614N (not sure if it´s udma100 or 133, but that shouldnt be a prob here...), CPU is Athlon 64 3000+ and my Floppy-Drive is a IBM 1,44" (-;
My Kernel is 2.6.13.

Heres also some bootlog stuff:

Quote:

<7>Probing IDE interface ide0...
<4>hda: SAMSUNG SP1614N, ATA DISK drive
<4>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
<6>hda: max request size: 1024KiB
<6>hda: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, UDMA(33)
<6>hda: cache flushes supported
<6> hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
<7>Probing IDE interface ide1...
<4>hdc: TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1212, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
<4>hdd: RICOH DVD+RW MP5125, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
<4>ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
<6>hdc: ATAPI 32X DVD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, UDMA(33)
<6>Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
<6>hdd: ATAPI 32X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)

slantoflight · 11-24-2005, 10:31 PM

Yea, 25 mb/s is pretty bad.

The good news is you atleast you know a few basic things that can help solve the problem and you're that much closer now.

We know you're using good? cable so it can't be that.

hdparm is'nt returning operation not permitted errors, so atleast the driver for the chipset, appears to be working correctly. A kernel recompile might even prove to be unneccessary or inefective.

So I guess the last question is, is it just your harddrive or bios harddrive configuration.