Frustrating HDD problem

[[UK]Superdude]

Hi all,

Having spent the afternoon crawling through the plethora of threads regarding hdparm, dma, slow computers, slow hard disks, cdroms, dvds etc etc I have finally hit a brick wall.

I have dma enabled on my disks, except that I am getting very poor transfer speeds from them.

I have a KT4V MSI mainboard, using the VT82xxxxx IDE driver. I have DMA enabled and built into the kernel.
The MB supports UDMA 133/100/66/33, and of the disks I have one is 133, the other is at least 100.
Hdparm results look like:

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hdparm /dev/hdd

/dev/hdd:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  1 (on)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  0 (off)
 geometry     = 65535/16/63, sectors = 60022480896, start = 0

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hdparm -i /dev/hdd

/dev/hdd:

 Model=WDC WD600BB-00CAA1, FwRev=17.07W17, SerialNo=WD-WMA8F1154115
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=57600, SectSize=600, ECCbytes=40
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117231408
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

 * signifies the current active mode

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hdparm -Tt /dev/hdd

/dev/hdd:
 Timing cached reads:   1180 MB in  2.00 seconds = 588.91 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   42 MB in  3.10 seconds =  13.56 MB/sec

with lspci:

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lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] Host Bridge (rev 80)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 05)
0000:00:06.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 05)
0000:00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600XT] (rev a1)

I have been through the kernel config and tried pretty much everything anyone has suggested on the forums. I dont use genkernel, and am using a nitro 2.6.10 kernel.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

[jschellhaass]

How are the drives jumpered? Are you using cable select? Is hdd a master or slave? If slave what is the master on the channel?

jeff

[[UK]Superdude]

The drives are jumpered with the above the slave, and the master on the cable being the other driver in question.
The other drive has another os, and is not used by my gentoo at all so there is less reason to have them on seperate channels even though that would be prefferable. Unfortunately with cases these days they seem to want to put your CD-ROMS about 5m away from the HDD cages

[jschellhaass]

What happens if you make the WD drive the master? Or the only drive, at least for testing.

jeff

[[UK]Superdude]

After some trials with the drive as the only disk on the cable, I get the same results from hdparm.

Something is definately not right here.....