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Speeding up IDE Drives with hdparm

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 11 months ago

OK folks, many people have been wanting to 'speed up Xandros', so here's something that's sure to please. By default, many IDE (ribbon cable) hard drives and cdrom drives are set to 16 bit non-dma mode. To fix this, we will use hdparm.

 

Be careful with this guys, you can bork things up big time!!! follow the tests first, then make permanent changes... You have been warned!!!

 

**Sigh*** OK, now that that's over.

 

1. Find out the real name of your hard drives / cdrom drives... ie not /dev/cdrom, or /dev/cdroms/hdc... I'm talking the real names like /dev/hda (typical for your primary hard drive) or /dev/hdc.

 

Here's how it usually blows down...

/dev/hda = primary master drive

/dev/hdb = primary slave drive

/dev/hdc = secondary master drive

/dev/hdd = secondary slave drive

 

Serial ATA users will probably NOT use these conventions, because every mobo is different... I use SCSI, and don't need this except for the fact there are no SCSI DVD burners for less than 5 grand, so I must do this for that device. I'm not actually sure if you'll even need this mod with serial ATA, but the next step will confirm whether you do or not...

 

2. Log in as root, open a terminal and type hdparm -c -d /dev/hda or whatever drive device you wish to get info from... You will get an output like this:

 

/dev/hda:

IO_support = 0 (16-bit)

using_dma = 0 (off)

 

3. OK, we can see things need some tweaking... To do this, type hdparm -c1 /dev/hda... You will get the output:

 

/dev/hda:

setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1

IO_support = 1 (32-bit)

 

4. Log in as a normal user and try some apps like quake3 and such, making sure there are no issues... if there aren't any, proceed to the next step...

 

5. Switch back to your root user and type hdparm -d1 /dev/hda or whatever drive device you wish to get info from... You will get an output like this:

 

/dev/hda:

setting using_dma to 1 (on)

using_dma = 1 (on)

 

6. Log in as a normal user and try some apps like quake3 and such, making sure there are no issues... if there aren't any, the testing is complete and we are truly ready to proceed to the next step... If it doesn't work, your drive doesn't work with dma on.. reboot and proceed to the next step, omitting the -d1 switch.

 

7. Open /etc/hdparm.conf in a text editer as root and add the following lines at the bottom of the file exactly as written unless ommiting the -d1 switch or unless your drive device name is different than shown

 

command_line {

hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda

}

 

You (obviously) will want to save the file as /etc/hdparm.conf when you are done adding the neccessary lines...

 

8. Type ln -s /etc/init.d/hdparm /etc/rcS.d/S29hdparm.second This ensures the hdparm.conf settings are loaded for sure.

 

9. That's it, enjoy the hard drive speed you paid for! If you have additional devices, start back at step 1, then use progs that utilize them (watch / burn a DVD, for example). and add them in another block in hdparm.conf when you are satisfied with the results... each device must begin with the keyword 'command_line'. do not leave that out! You do not need to perform step 8 again when you do this...

 

Hope this helps, and happy tweaking Smile

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