Disk I/O - too slow?

[Don Levey]

On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 20:52, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> Am Di, den 24.02.2004 schrieb Don Levey um 02:30:
> > 
> > So...  I've got DMA enabled, Multiple I/O, EIDE 32-bit and lookahead
> > enabled in my /etc/sysconfig/harddisks file.  Running that hdparm line
> > gives me:
> > 
> > /dev/hdb: 
> > Timing buffer-cache reads:   1204 MB in  2.00 seconds = 601.49 MB/sec
> > Timing buffered disk reads:   96 MB in  3.00 seconds =  31.97 MB/sec
> > 
> > ...clearly *not* fast.  This is a Maxtor Diamond ATA 120Gb drive,
> > 7200rpm, on an ASUS A7V8X-X mb.  I'm running FC1 with a 2.6.3 kernel
> > from kernel.org.  Any suggestions for speeding up my I/O (or more info
> > to provide)?
> > 
> > TIA,  -Don
> 
> Just let hands off /etc/sysconfig/harddisks.

I had been following the suggestion in Linux Journal about those
settings.  Based upon the above, I re-commented the lines in question
and restarted the machine.  Now I get:
/dev/hdb:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   1128 MB in  2.00 seconds = 563.80 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  110 MB in  3.08 seconds =  35.77 MB/sec

...which leads me to believe that what I had done didn't have much
effect in any event.  Is this what I can expect on my machine, or is
there something else I should do?

 -Don

p.s. I forgot to mention before: I'm running an AMD Athlon 2600+
(1.91GHz).