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#1 2005-06-10 03:59:30

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
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SATA slow??

Hey,

I've searched google, and found hdparm doesn't have much to do with sata, can't configure it or anything, but it can be used for timings. But in my search, I discovered that most people are getting results like this:

    * /dev/sda:
    * Timing cached reads:   1320 MB in  2.01 seconds = 657.80 MB/sec
    * Timing buffered disk reads:  168 MB in  3.01 seconds =  55.73 MB/sec

I'm getting this:

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   3012 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1506.23 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  5.99 seconds =   1.34 MB/sec

Why are my disk reads so much slower? Actually, its been reporting in kilobytes, that's the first time I got it even that high.

from what I've read, its not possible to adjust stuff on these drives just yet, unless it may be done in the BIOS... any other ideas?

Dusty

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#2 2005-06-10 04:10:32

MNKyDeth
Member
From: MI
Registered: 2003-09-13
Posts: 89

Re: SATA slow??

Dusty, what sata controller and wich kernel are you using. As I know the results you posted I can easily duplicate on a silicone image sata chip but not on others. There was an issue with early kernels in the 2.6 area and the 2.4 kernels with the silicon image sata chip.

As of kernel 2.6.6 it should have been dfixed though for that chipset. Only other thing I can think of is if your using an extremely new sata type chip and the kernel has only gone 1-2 revisions with drivers for it.

So, yeah, some specs may help here. smile

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#3 2005-06-10 04:25:06

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
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Re: SATA slow??

Kernel 2.6.11.10. I'm not sure how to find out the exact chip, but its a via chipset on an Asus board.

root:dusty # dmesg | grep via
sata_via version 1.1
sata_via(0000:00:0f.0): routed to hard irq line 10
scsi0 : sata_via
scsi1 : sata_via

Does that help? this is out of my realm of expertise...

Dusty

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#4 2005-06-10 06:39:30

cactus
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Re: SATA slow??

Very interesting. Here is what I get:

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   3536 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1766.50 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.00 seconds =  56.58 MB/sec

Found this: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/printthread.php?t=36072
Some talk about hdparm, and blktool, and sata..

This thread: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/4/14/73
Has some good info too, notably on sata in 2.6.11.x series..

This is workaround for the Linux sata_sil driver for Mod15Write quirk occurring on sil3112/3114 controller + some Seagate drive combinations.  If you have Seagate drives hanging off sil controllers and they are dog slow, this is what you're looking for.

This site: http://home-tj.org/m15w/ and the above quote off said site, came from a link in the lkml thread link posted above..do you have that combination dusty?


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#5 2005-06-10 06:52:00

cactus
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Re: SATA slow??

oh, and I found out my controller by using lshwd.

lshwd -n | grep -i "SATA"
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp.|82801FR/FRW (ICH6R/ICH6RW) SATA Controller (ahci)

"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#6 2005-06-10 07:46:23

incinerator
Member
From: Edinburgh, Scotland
Registered: 2005-02-15
Posts: 80

Re: SATA slow??

In some cases it is not the chipsets fault but the hard drive's. Several (older) SATA hard drives have serious bugs and the kernel has to perform some workarounds in order to get them to work without errors. The kernel has a specific black list for this.

I'd recommend having a look at Jeff Garzik's Linux SATA pages.

Cheers,
Dominik

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#7 2005-06-11 00:52:25

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
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Re: SATA slow??

First,

dusty:dustyl $ lshwd -n | grep -i "SATA"
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies Inc|VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (sata_via)

cactus: I do have a seagate drive, but I don't think its an sil controller... via controller, is that gonna be sil?  And I'm getting a lot less than 20MB/sec... maybe I should try kernel24.

Dusty

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#8 2005-06-11 01:00:56

cactus
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Posts: 4,622
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Re: SATA slow??

no, sil is Silicon Image.
I  have heard (read) some people have luck with 2.6.8 kernels. Some driver might have changed to make shitty performance with seagates. Try the 2.6.8 and see if it helps..then you might be able to narrow it down...

EDIT: Apparently the seagate drives have some issue, so are blacklisted (with sil). this might be the case for other dirvers too. As a blacklisted device they run slower...much slower...
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … did=329132

and apparently

It's basically because of faulty SATA implementation of the affected seagate hard drives


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#9 2005-06-11 01:48:13

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I tried kernel 2.4 and 2.6 in knoppix, same results...

I can't find anything that relates via problems with seagate drives under Linux. Apparently, if you use Windows, you might have problems if you use the MS driver instead of the via driver, but... I'm not using Windows (did you guess that?) Google doesn't seem to be saying the via driver is at fault.

I could just about cry... now the CPU fan has got a tick in it and it was so quiet before... *sigh*

Dusty

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#10 2005-06-11 01:53:07

IceRAM
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From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
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Re: SATA slow??

Hmm.. I have 2 fully working Seagate ST3120827AS SATA drives (120GB with NCQ, NCQ not supported by the MB chipset though - what can I do? I can't satisfy all the tech advances at the same time).

/dev/sda
Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.02 seconds =  56.34 MB/sec
Timing cached reads:   3592 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1794.48 MB/sec
/dev/sdb
Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.01 seconds =  56.45 MB/sec
Timing cached reads:   3564 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1782.27 MB/sec

I do get one/two strange line(s) when hdparm is exiting, one for -t and two for -T:

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

The HDDs work perfectly despite those warnings.

Both HDDs are relatively new.. I believe they were both produced this year. From what I've read on the net, Seagates are the only HDDs truly implementing SATA controllers. Others are using SATA connectors but keeping the IDE controller.

# lshwd -n | grep -i "SATA"
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp.|82801EB ICH5 IDE (SATA) (ata_piix)
# uname -a
Linux aquarium 2.6.11.7-ARCH #1 SMP Sat Apr 9 13:37:54 PDT 2005 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

As for compatibility, I've always used Intel CPU+Intel Chipset (AMD doesn't do chipsets, very bad), Gigabyte MB + Gigabyte VideoCard (nVidia) - a non-written rule I have to keep me safe(r) from weird issues.

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#11 2005-06-11 01:53:48

cactus
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Posts: 4,622
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Re: SATA slow??

what versions does knoppix use as far as 2.4 and 2.6?


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#12 2005-06-11 01:55:54

cactus
Taco Eater
From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
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Re: SATA slow??

IceRAM wrote:

I do get one/two strange line(s) when hdparm is exiting, one for -t and two for -T:

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Those are just errors because hdparm doesnt know sata. I got those too. No harm, no foul.


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#13 2005-06-11 02:12:43

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I get the HDIO errors too. I can't remember which versions knoppix used, they were outdate, its on oldish disk. 2.4.27 and 2.6.7 are my best guesses.

I reset my bios defaults, still no cigar. sad It may be a smalll bit better...

Hey, I just found on google, my Mobo has two sata controllers. One is a Via sata, the other is promise sata raid... it says sata raid in the manual, any way I could connect just the one drive to it? the claim is promise chipsets are better supported..

Dusty

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#14 2005-06-11 02:22:53

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I just noticed that via has proprietary linux drivers:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&Type=3

But they are all raid drivers... that is not what I need, is it? 

Ugh... too confusing after a hard day.

Dusty

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#15 2005-06-11 02:28:44

MNKyDeth
Member
From: MI
Registered: 2003-09-13
Posts: 89

Re: SATA slow??

I have tried onboard silicone mage chipsets, the Adaptec 1210sa wich uses the silicone image chipset. I also have tried the promise S150 TX4 and one other wierd sata chipset on an older mobo I have and by far the Promise chipset was the best for me. So I would give that one a whirl as it shouldn't give you any issues as it has been in the 2.6 kernel since the beta versions.

Now, also remember, all sata controlers and chips out there right now are software driven. They don't do hardware raid. The only true hardware raid sata controller I know of is made by 3ware.

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#16 2005-06-11 02:41:13

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I'm not looking for raid at all, I don't think. I'm using the promise controller now, in "IDE mode" according to the bios, as opposed to raid mode.

Problem is, I'm still getting ridiculous rates from hdparm:

hdparm wrote:

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   2984 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1491.48 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  7.61 seconds =   1.05 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

One thing, I installed the drive myself... could I have neglected or damaged something in such a way that it slows it down?

Maybe I should try Windows... ech. (any idea how to time hard disks in windows?)

Dusty

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#17 2005-06-11 03:31:27

johnisevil
Member
From: Hamilton, ON Canada
Registered: 2003-08-07
Posts: 221
Website

Re: SATA slow??

I don't know if this helps or not, but here's why hdparm results.  I'm using an ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard and have my SATA disk attached to the VIA RAID controller.

[root@metatron ~]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1784 MB in  2.00 seconds = 891.24 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 Timing buffered disk reads:  172 MB in  3.03 seconds =  56.83 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

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#18 2005-06-11 03:38:04

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

johnisevil: That's the exact motherboard I've got... what brand of SATA disk do you have?

Seagates are supposed to be the best... I search for problems with this model and nobody else has had any...

The worst part is, my system seems to be a lot slower than it was when I started, so I'm tempted to think something has gone wrong since then. But maybe that's just because I was enamoured with the new comp in the beginning. ;-)

Plus the tic in the fan is getting worse, and I can't see anything in there that can be causing it. :-/  Its just been a bad day.

Dusty

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#19 2005-06-11 04:22:28

johnisevil
Member
From: Hamilton, ON Canada
Registered: 2003-08-07
Posts: 221
Website

Re: SATA slow??

Dusty: I have an 80gb Maxtor.  SATA is good because it will be more widely used, but in terms of speed I haven't noticed anything drastic between SATA and IDE.

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#20 2005-06-11 04:45:00

ghostwalker
Member
From: Tacoma, WA
Registered: 2004-07-28
Posts: 140

Re: SATA slow??

I think there is a util for sd devices sdparm http://sg.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html
sorry for scsi disks only???


P4 2.8Ghz @ 2.8Ghz SL6WT
Zalman CNPS7000-Cu
865PE Neo-2 LS BIOs 2.4
512mb Mushkin Level II
160GB Maxtor HD
Geforce 4 440MX
Antec 3700 1 exhaust and 1 intake fans
Linux 2.6.x
Linux user 314187
ArchLinux

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#21 2005-06-11 09:42:08

IceRAM
Member
From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
Website

Re: SATA slow??

MNKyDeth wrote:

Now, also remember, all sata controlers and chips out there right now are software driven. They don't do hardware raid. The only true hardware raid sata controller I know of is made by 3ware.

I had the feeling that only Seagate offers a native SATA interface solution on desktop drives (can't find a reliable source for this piece of information right now, but I'm sure I've seen it, with interface chips on the HDDs compared and so on).

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#22 2005-06-11 15:28:17

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I still can't find any info... I tried dmesg | grep seagate and dmesg | grep blacklist and found nothing... apparently for people with sil problem with seagate drives these bring information up. I'm at wits' end, I don't want to buy another drive, this one is brand new.

As far as I can see, there's nothing wrong with this output from dmesg?:

dmesg wrote:

libata version 1.10 loaded.
sata_promise version 1.01
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:08.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8806200 ctl 0xF8806238 bmdma 0x0 irq 18
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8806280 ctl 0xF88062B8 bmdma 0x0 irq 18
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7d01 84:4003 85:3469 86:3c01 87:4003 88:407f
ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 234441648 sectors: lba48
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi0 : sata_promise
ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi1 : sata_promise
  Vendor: ATA       Model: ST3120827AS       Rev: 3.42
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
sata_via version 1.1
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0f.0[B] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
sata_via(0000:00:0f.0): routed to hard irq line 10
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xD000 ctl 0xC802 bmdma 0xB800 irq 20
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC400 ctl 0xC002 bmdma 0xB808 irq 20
ata3: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi2 : sata_via
ata4: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi3 : sata_via
SCSI device sda: 234441648 512-byte hdwr sectors (120034 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 234441648 512-byte hdwr sectors (120034 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 p4 < p5 p6 p7 >
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

Anybody know anything about updating harddrive firmware....?

Or where I could get a temporary copy of windows to see if its slow in there too?

Or where I could get another hard drive to test without spending more money... *sigh*

Dusty

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#23 2005-06-12 00:52:16

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I was just thinking... the problem may have happened after I repartitioned... is there a possibility the use of an extended partition or something like that is the problem?

Dusty

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#24 2005-06-12 18:18:07

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: SATA slow??

I contacted seagate, and they insist it must be the controller driver. I wish I could try it under a windows install to verify this. I don't understand why this same motherboard is working all right for other people.

I'm thinking of just choking $100 and buying another drive, but I don't know whether to get a SATA and hope it works or to get an IDE and let it get obsolete, or to get a PCI SATA controller.

johnisevil: exactly what model is your 80GB maxtor? Maybe I should try to get the same. Did you have to do anything special to get it working... people talk about proprietary drivers, but I can't find any for via or promise controller that aren't 2.4 kernel.

I'm thinking of contacting the linux kernel list, but I hate to bug those guys. Mind you, last time I did, they inserted a couple lines into the kernel and solved my problem...

Dusty

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#25 2005-06-12 18:40:06

johnisevil
Member
From: Hamilton, ON Canada
Registered: 2003-08-07
Posts: 221
Website

Re: SATA slow??

Dusty: This is the relevant information from my dmesg:

scsi1 : sata_via
  Vendor: ATA       Model: Maxtor 6Y080M0    Rev: YAR5
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05

As for getting it working, I didn't really have to do anything.  When I first reinstalled Arch after I put the SATA disk in here I did run into a problem which involved changing the devfs style device naming in /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab to /dev/sda style.  Other than that my only really specific configuration is in the custom kernel I use.  I have SATA enabled under SCSI and have support enable for VIA SATA since I use that controller instead of the Promise RAID controller on this ASUS A8V deluxe board.

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