[plug] hdparm troubles

[Steve Boak]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 09:16 am, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> On Sunday 18 July 2004 00:45, Craig Ringer wrote:
> > I'd try 2.4.recent first. Why upgrade a whole major series just to /see/
> > if there are some driver improvements that might help?
>
> IIRC, he's running a newer kernel than I. It works with SuSE's build
> of 2.4.16.

Yep - 2.4.22, latest is only 2.4.26 - I'll leave this as-is for now.
>
> # cat /proc/ide/drivers
> ide-floppy version 0.97.sv
> ide-cdrom version 4.59
> ide-disk version 1.11
>
Mine is ide-disk version 1.17

> I'd first confirm that the IDE cable is correct, that the drive
> functions "correctly" on another system, that another drive behaves
> as badly on the same system and that the BIOS is up to date.

min:~# cat /proc/ide/via
-----------------------Primary IDE-------Secondary IDE------
Cable Type:                   80w                 40w

Previous drive, a Seagate 30Gb acted exactly the same - upgrading the drive 
was the reason for having another go at getting the performance up a bit.
The bios was upgraded about 6 months ago (to enable USB booting) to the latest 
available for my board - EPIA Bios ver 1.06, 19/6/2003. I've checked and 
there is nothing newer available.
>
> As outlined in another message; hdparm's behaviour is puzzling.

Every case of hdparm -Tt I have seen in messages has a different test block 
size - from the low 100's to around 2000MB - seems to be dynamic depending on 
the processor speed (and maybe memory capacity)?

I think I will drop this to background priority for now and investigate the 
possibility of strangeness in the Via chipset or driver patches.

Thanks heaps to all who have helped on this, I'll report back to the list 
anything I find that may be a help to anyone else later.

Steve

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