Arch Linux

t3kka

Member

Registered: 2011-09-02

Posts: 5

Extremely slow HDD performance on Acer 7551

Has anyone else experienced slow performance on their laptop (I wouldn't think this is specific to the Acer but I suppose its possible) where it takes at least 2 seconds or more for the command to seem to be executed? The login prompt is an obvious first example for me (via the command prompt not a DM) where after I enter my username the Password prompt wont appear for about 2-3 seconds and then even after the password being entered the bash prompt wont appear for another 2-3 seconds.  The HDD light is active/blinking during these pauses too so its like its seeking for something on the other end of the drive.

Its a standard laptop HDD speed (5400 RPM) but I wouldn't think this would make the hiccups occur.  I never noticed this before in other installations such as Fedora and Ubuntu.

Is it possible that its my partition schema? It is as follows:

sda1 --> /boot
sda2 --> /
sda3 --> /var
sda5 --> /swap (logical)
sda6 --> /home (logical)
sda7 --> /tmp (logical)

I have also tried the standard recommended:

sda1 --> /root
sda2 --> /var
sda3 --> /swap
sda5 --> /home (logical)

and still the issue remains.  Is it really just my HDD?

t3kka

Member

Registered: 2011-09-02

Posts: 5

Re: Extremely slow HDD performance on Acer 7551

Reading around on some other threads I found regarding a slow login to tty I noticed some folks state that a large root partition could be the problem.  My HDD is 500GB with the root, var, swap, and home partitions being ~80GB, ~20GB, ~6GB, and then the remainder as in home (respectively).  Maybe having a large root partition along with the location of the home partition makes the HDD head travel a much further distance which is physically equated to a delay in login and other actions.  With such a large HDD, what would you recommend for partition schemes?

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2009-10-07

Posts: 638

Re: Extremely slow HDD performance on Acer 7551

Reading around on some other threads I found regarding a slow login to tty I noticed some folks state that a large root partition could be the problem.  My HDD is 500GB with the root, var, swap, and home partitions being ~80GB, ~20GB, ~6GB, and then the remainder as in home (respectively).  Maybe having a large root partition along with the location of the home partition makes the HDD head travel a much further distance which is physically equated to a delay in login and other actions.  With such a large HDD, what would you recommend for partition schemes?

I have a 640 gb 5400rpm drive, and I've installed arch with only a huge root partition on it in the past, and had no speed issues (currently I have a 40gb root and a ~595gb home and a 5 gig swap).

Last edited by bwat47 (2012-06-24 20:56:03)

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Extremely slow HDD performance on Acer 7551

I set this to keep my disk performance up

/sbin/hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing -m 16 -S0 -B255 /dev/sda