Re: hda dma seek errors

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Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> You only want to do that as a last resort, it makes your
> disk IO very slow.
> You would change it using hdparm ... the option would be:
> hdparm -d0
> You can make it happen every reboot by editing the file:
> /etc/sysconfig/harddisks
> set:
> USE_DMA=0
> and remove the # in front of it.
> AGAIN ... only if absolutely necessary, because it greatly
> slows down disk I/O.

Yep.  Programmed I/O (PIO) means you now involve your CPU and
system interconnect, instead of Direct Memory Access (DMA)
which transfers directly from drive to memory.

With DMA, the limit is your PCI (peripheral) interconnect,
typically 75-100MBps realistically for a legacy 32-bit @
33MHz PCI with no contention (much higher for PCI64/66, PCI-X
or PCIe).

With PIO, you'll quickly find that not only will your CPU
usage spike as the CPU gets bogged down with just controlling
the I/O channel, but pushing more than 15MBps over a legacy
32-bit @ 33MHz PCI bus is virtually impossible.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)

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