Hi to everyone,
one of my two hard drives show extremely poor performance.

My PC has the following characteristics:

Motherboard: Biostar M7VKA VIA KT133/686A
CPU: Athlon 900MHz
Ram: 512MB
Maxtor DMax Plus 40 30GB 53073U6 UATA/66 as master on IDE0
Maxtor DMax Plus 9 120GB 6Y120L0 UATA/133 as master on IDE1
LG DVD Rom as slave on IDE1

The drives are partitioned as follows

[root@montagnini3 root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdc: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 238216 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 121905 61440088+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 121906 182858 30720312 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 182859 238216 27900432 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hda: 30.6 GB, 30603724800 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3720 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 7 56196 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 8 3720 29824672+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 2725 2790 530113+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 2791 3720 7470193+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 8 1027 8193087 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 1028 2724 13631121 83 Linux

Hard drive performance:

[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -i /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

Model=Maxtor 53073U6, FwRev=DA620CQ0, SerialNo=EK60JQGPC
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=59772900
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
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4
AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-4 T13 1153D revision 17: 1 2 3 4 5

[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -v /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 3720/255/63, sectors = 59772900, start = 0

[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

Model=Maxtor 6Y120L0, FwRev=YAR41BW0, SerialNo=Y3JTZ4PE
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=240121728
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
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 udma5 udma6
AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: (null): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -v /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 238216/16/63, sectors = 240121728, start = 0

[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.91 seconds =140.66 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 590.05 seconds =111.07 kB/sec
[root@montagnini3 root]# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.88 seconds =145.45 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.82 seconds = 35.16 MB/sec

[root@montagnini3 root]# time dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=1K count=1M [after 10 minutes I stopped it by CTRL+C]
71496+0 records in
71496+0 records out


real 10m45.851s
user 0m0.040s
sys 0m0.430s
[root@montagnini3 root]# time dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/null bs=1K count=1M
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out

real 0m26.963s
user 0m0.390s
sys 0m6.940s

Does someone have an idea why the hda drive is so slow?

Thanks for any help

Valerio

Those look like PIO speeds for hda. Double check your cabling to that drive. You need an 80 wire 40 pin cable for hda in order to get full ATA 66 speed. If you use a 40 wire 40 pin cable you will get PIO or ATA 33 speeds from the drive. That's the first thing that jumped out at me. Also, check your jumpering and check how the drive is reported in your bios setup.

Hi,
I'm actually using a 80 wire 40 pin cable to connect the hda drive. What do you mean with check your jumpering? On the drive or the motherboard?
On the hard disk, jumpers are set to master.
I checked the BIOS but everything looks fine there.

If you have the 80 wire cable, try setting the hard drive jumper to cable select and see if that helps. Another thing that might be worthwhile is downloading the maxtor hard drive diagnostics and running them on hda.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

You can also try swapping the cables from hda/hdc.

Even setting the hard drive jumper to cable select does not improve the situation: accordingly to the results of the hdparm command it is transferring at 111 KB/s.
I tried also to switch the cable between the two hard drive and nothing changed.
Unfortunately I did not find any diagnostic software for linux machine at that web address. I dont't have windows on this machine.

I'm posting here also the part of the output of the dmesg command that concerns the hard drive detection.

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1
VP_IDE: chipset revision 16
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686a (rev 22) IDE UDMA66 controller on pci00:07.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe000-0xe007, BIOS settings: hda: DMA, hdb: pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xe008-0xe00f, BIOS settings: hdc: DMA, hdd: DMA
hda: Maxtor 53073U6, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03be900, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: Maxtor 6Y120L0, ATA DISK drive
hdd: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8164B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
blk: queue c03bed60, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 59772900 sectors (30604 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=3720/255/63, UDMA(66)
hdc: host protected area => 1
hdc: 240121728 sectors (122942 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=238216/16/63, UDMA(66)
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
hdc: hdc1 hdc2 hdc3
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide

Hoping this can help.

Here's a link with the iso files for the maxtor hard drive utilities:

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...2FMaxtor+Other

Get both the PowerMax and MaxBlast isos. They burn to bootable cds from which you can run the hard drive diagnostics/utilities.

Has this problem always existed, or did it happen just recently?
Also, what kernel version are you running?

Thanks,

It was not like that from the beginning. I don't remember exactly, but probably just happened when I moved from Redhat 7.3 to Redhat 9.0.
I'm actually using Redhat 9.0 with its original kernel (2.4.20-8).