Re: disk diagnostics

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pieter Dumon wrote:

> Hi,
>
> how can I diagnose my disk read/write throughput under DFLy ?
> my system runs well except that untarring even small tar files or
> deleting files takes a lot of time (e.g. the removal of
> /usr/obj/usr/src/world_i386 during a make buildworld takes about 25
> minutes (I admit it's got a lot of files, but still....)).
>
> I don't know if it can have anything to do with my strange
> configuration of having the two harddisks on ATA1 while the CDs are on
> ATA0. The disk with the DFly slice is only UDMA33 (there are no DFLy
> slices on the other disk), but still, under windows and linux I don't
> have this slow disk access.
>
> ad2: 28629MB <ST330621A> [58168/16/63] at ata1-master UDMA33
> ad3: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-00JHC0> [155061/16/63] at ata1-slave UDMA100
> acd0: DVD-R <AOPEN DUW1608/ARR> at ata0-master PIO4
> acd1: CDROM <CD-ROM 36X/AKU> at ata0-slave PIO4
>
> regards,
>
> Pieter

Agree that is not an optimal set up - faster IDE drives uusally fare best on 
80-pin cable to ad0 (master) and ad2 (master) with CD's as slaves, or better 
yet, on a PCI-bus add-on controller so there is no master/slave speed difference.

But neither should it take 25 minutes to do the removal.

Perchance, is something *else* running at the same time (what is in 'top'?)

Or is extensive other activity hitting the same device/slice/partition as that 
being rm'ed? (head thrashing...)

Or - perchance is a background fsck running on another part of the media you are 
trying to utilize?

Bill