Hard Drives

Warren Togami warren at togami.com
Mon Sep 10 13:40:11 PDT 2001


The speed difference is mainly noticable if the drive is used often, like
for the operating system or swap.  I wouldn't worry so much about speed if
it were storage... but maybe not mass storage for large multimedia stuff.

Either way, be sure that DMA is enabled in IDE, and use the highest level of
UDMA supported by your IDE controller and IDE cable.
UDMA 3 = Ultra DMA 33   <--- 40 pin cable
UDMA 4 = Ultra DMA 66   <--- 80 pin cable
UDMA 5 = Ultra DMA 100 <--- 80 pin cable

[root at computer /root]# hdparm -d /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 using_dma    =  1 (on)

[root at computer /root]# hdparm -t /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 2.70 seconds =  23.68 MB/sec

Be careful though, because DMA can destroy data or hard drives with some
flaky controllers, older kernels and a few flaky Western Digital hard
drives.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rodney Kanno" <pepe65 at hawaii.rr.com>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 4:18 AM
Subject: [luau] Hard Drives


> Is there a noticable difference in speed between a 5400 rpm and a 7200 rpm
> hard drive?
>



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