Question: I have just installed Debian testing on my new desktop and I am not very happy with performance – when I perform a disk intensive operation, e.g. upgrade packages in the system, everything seems to freeze, e.g. changing tabs in Iceweasel takes 3 seconds. I run the Debian on my 3 year old Thinkpad X60 ultra-portable, and I don’t have these issues. (every single parameter of the laptop is much worse than the desktop).
I am using the default packaged kernel and scripts.
I run
hdparm -t /dev/sda1
And I got around 96GB/s, which is expected. What else can I try to make it work better?
EDIT:
grzes:/home/ga# hdparm -i /dev/sda/dev/sda: Model=WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1, FwRev=80.00A80, SerialNo=WD-WMAVU1362357 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=2930277168 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: ?pio0 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: ?mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ?ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7 * signifies the current active mode
EDIT2: Even my wife said “on this new computer I can’t do anything when I copy the photos from the camera and its much worse than on the old one”. So it must be serious.
EDIT3: Updated to 2.6.32, but still no improvement
EDIT4: I forgot to mention that the new disk is ext4, the old was ext3.
EDIT5: Still not solved. I have a P43 ASUS P5QL-E board. Lines from dmesg that seem relevant:
[ ?0.370850] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253) ??[ ?0.370852] io scheduler noop registered ?????[ ?0.370853] io scheduler anticipatory registered ????[ ?0.370854] io scheduler deadline registered ?????[ ?0.370876] io scheduler cfq registered (default)…[ ?0.908233] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.13 ????[ ?0.908243] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 ??[ ?0.908246] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 P2 P1 P3 ] ????[ ?0.908275] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 ???[ ?0.908316] scsi0 : ata_piix ??????[ ?0.908374] scsi1 : ata_piix ??????[ ?0.909180] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xa000 ctl 0x9c00 bmdma 0x9480 irq 19 ??[ ?0.909183] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9880 ctl 0x9800 bmdma 0x9488 irq 19 ??[ ?0.909199] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 ??[ ?0.909202] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: MAP [ P0 — P1 — ] ????[ ?0.909228] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: setting latency timer to 64 ???[ ?0.909279] scsi2 : ata_piix ??????[ ?0.909326] scsi3 : ata_piix ??????[ ?0.910021] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xb000 ctl 0xac00 bmdma 0xa480 irq 19
Answer: Check the offset for the partition – needs to be divisable by 4 for EARS as they have the 4096 technology. ?If it isn’t – repartition it to get alignment and performance issues should go away (misaligned EARS drives will be doing a lot more sector writes per op).