improve the sata drive performance

[nesargha]

hi guys,
i have installed red hat 9 on intel p4 3ghz machine, 1 gb ram and 300gb segate sata drive. the problem is the machine is runing slow.

the hdparm gives me the following

# hdparm -t
/dev/hda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 19.38 seconds = 3.30 MB/sec

******

my sata drive configuration is as follows

*****

# hdparm -v -i /dev/hda
/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 = 36481/255/63, sectors = 586072368, start = 0

Model=ST3300822AS, FwRev=3.AAE, SerialNo=4NF11DM4
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,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
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: device does not report version: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

*****
my kernel configuration is as follows

*****
# ls -l /usr/src
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 2003 debug
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 May 25 01:23 linux-2.4 -> linux-2.4.20-8
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 May 25 01:23 linux-2.4.20-8
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 May 25 01:21 redhat

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so please tell me how can i improve the performance of the server.

[antidrugue]

hi guys,
i have installed red hat 9 on intel p4 3ghz machine, 1 gb ram and 300gb segate sata drive. the problem is the machine is runing slow.


/dev/hda:

That's your problem right there. If your SATA drive is detect as /dev/hda (plus with dma turned off) then obviously it is going to underperform. It should appear as /dev/sda.

I don't remember how to do it in kernel 2.4 (didn't use SATA drives at the time) but you might want to recompile your kernel to statically assign SATA drivers to your drive instead of some generic IDE ones like now. Or you can just change the order of module loading (by using a initrd file perhaps).