Copy files from partition to partition too slow, SATA hard disk.What should I do£¿

Ryanlee · 10-27-2005, 08:01 AM

I have 3 partitions in linux, all reiser format.
Copy small file is ok. Copy big files from partition to partiton, like 1.4G dvdrip movie :
It's about 11 MB/s at beginning , soon the speed slow down , the slowest speed is about 3.4 MB/s, most of time the copy speed is 5 Mb/s .
This speed is very slow. What should I do ?
My hard disk is 80G 7200rpm sata.

Keruskerfuerst · 10-27-2005, 08:08 AM

Hello!

The slow speed results from copying from partition to partition on a single disk.

Greetings

Ryanlee · 10-27-2005, 08:12 AM

but much slower than do copy in windows.

Ryanlee · 10-27-2005, 08:15 AM

copy 1.4G in linux Suse10.0, about 3 mins.
in windows, less than 1:20.

broch · 10-27-2005, 08:40 AM

on SATA SuSE 9.3 (XFS) copying 3.4 GB on the same disk between two partitions took 2:50
It would depend on FS, controler (SIl is worse than nVidia), other disk intensive processes

Ryanlee · 10-27-2005, 11:13 AM

su
RLee:/home/lee # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 2060 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1029.94 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 42 MB in 3.04 seconds = 13.81 MB/sec

how about yours?

broch · 10-27-2005, 12:29 PM

hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 3508 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1753.39 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 170 MB in 3.00 seconds = 56.66 MB/sec

This is not really informative test

Ryanlee · 10-27-2005, 08:56 PM

.......................

oops...........

did you do some settings after you install suse?

Ryanlee · 10-28-2005, 08:53 AM

RLee:/home/lee # hdparm -d1 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

hmmmm.......somebody help me pls.........

broch · 10-28-2005, 08:59 AM

I have not changed anything specific.
I have Seagate 120MB (Hitachi worked as well until disk died) SATA connected to nvidia SATA controler (there are some problems with SIl because of design), XFS file system and option noatime set in fstab. Disk is divided into /, /boot, /home, and swap (obviously). There is a problem with your hardware I am afraid. Though it is possible that something happened with your SuSE installation. I have seen worse (and better results) than mine, but yours is "unhealthy". I would try some disk diagnostics.

broch · 10-28-2005, 09:01 AM

Quote:

hdparm -d1 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

This is normal, benign error: SATA is not fully recognized as DMA capable. Forget about this error.

Ryanlee · 10-28-2005, 11:30 AM

my disk is healthy. I am quite sure.

Yalla-One · 10-28-2005, 11:56 AM

Hi,

Have you tried playing with the other hdparm parameters to check if you have 32-bit access to the disk etc?

Make sure to check out your harddrives physical capabilities before changing the settings, as tweaking too much can lead to dataloss or worse!

As an example, I increased harddrive performance on my system by adding this to the startup-scripts : /usr/sbin/hdparm -c3 -m16 /dev/hda

-Y1

broch · 10-28-2005, 11:57 AM

DMA settings do not apply to SATA.

SlackerLX · 10-28-2005, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ryanlee
my disk is healthy. I am quite sure.

Your disk is just fine. It depends on disk itself. I have ATA and S-ATA:

Code:

slackware:/home/slackerlx# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing cached reads:   1796 MB in  2.00 seconds = 896.34 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  158 MB in  3.02 seconds =  52.24 MB/sec
slackware:/home/slackerlx# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1896 MB in  2.00 seconds = 948.14 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  166 MB in  3.01 seconds =  55.18 MB/sec
slackware:/home/slackerlx#