[Sussex] HDPARM

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 11:35:39AM +0100, Angelo Servini wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Ive discovered a link that shows how to get extra performance from
> your Hard Disk drive called HDPARM.  Watch out though, it can damage
> your filesystem.  Anyone have any experience of using this facility?

I've played with it. I found it handy for switching DMA on the disks if
the kernel did not default to it...

But hdparm should no longer be necessary, as the kernel should [1]
expose the necessary settings in e.g. /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings:
    # cd /proc/ide/ide0/hda
    # cat settings
    # echo using_dma:0 > settings   # switch DMA off
    # echo using_dma:1 > settings   # switch DMA on

etc.

I still keep hdparm around because of the man page ;-)

[1] depends on your kernel config etc

Hope this helps
-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl at jorgensen.com   http://karl.jorgensen.com
... An rfc2324 advocate
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2324.html
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