[Wolves] Slow file transfer in Ubuntu 7.04

[James Turner]

Adam Sweet wrote:
> --- Mo Awkati <mawkati at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>> Ever since I installed Ubuntu I have always
>> experienced slow transfer rates if I drag and drop
>> from one folder to another. It seems to be slowest
>> when transferring photos.  DMA is enabled. I have
>> not experienced this with any distros. This is also
>> the case if I am burning a DVD, e.g. Linux Format
>> DVD it is very very slow, almost in the order of an
>> hour to burn it? The hardware is OK.
> 
> Hey Mo (where you goin to with that gun in your hand*)
> 
> I don't know of any Ubuntu issues which would cause
> this kind of problem, but I did come across an article
> today which discusses disk performannce:
> 
> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-fast-is-linux-sata-hard-disk.html

Although not that likely, but it may be worth confirming that the poor
performance isn't due to disc errors/retries. A quick way to investigate:

 - Do a slow file transfer
 - Open up a terminal
 - Type:
     dmesg

A load of technical gibberish will scroll past - the device detection

. If lines such as these appear at the end then that's indicative of an
error:

kernel: hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
kernel: hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

Also examine the output from the following, substituting the device name
of your drive (hdb, sda, etc) as appropriate:

/usr/sbin/smartctl --all /dev/hda

The above tool is found in the smartmontools package.

Regards,

James