Yes indeed. As soon as I sent you last email I realized that and set the write back option. Now I get 130MB/s better but still nowhere close to 600MB/s as advertised or what others say one should see. What are your recommendations about HW choice? What is more preferrable and better? Another question do I need to set WCE on all the disks first before creating RAID0? Or can I do that after creating RAID0? I tried to set WCE on existing RAID0 but it fails "change_mode_page: failed fetching page: Caching (SBC)". sdparm --set=WCE --save /dev/sda /dev/sda: FUJITSU MBD2300RC D809 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=128k count=80k oflag=direct 81920+0 records in 81920+0 records out 10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 82.8041 seconds, 130 MB/s Thanks for your help as always. On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Joe Landman <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote: > On 04/20/2011 07:50 PM, Mohit Anchlia wrote: >> >> I did that but it looks the same. I did get an error even though it >> says write-caching is on. >> >> [root at dslg1 ~]# hdparm -W1 /dev/sda >> >> /dev/sda: >> ?setting drive write-caching to 1 (on) >> ?HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(setcache) failed: Invalid argument >> [root at dslg1 ~]# hdparm /dev/sda > > You might need sdparm > > ? ? ? ?sdparm -a /dev/sda | grep WCE > > With WCE on I see > > ? ? ? ?[root at smash ~]# sdparm -a /dev/sda | grep WCE > ? ? ? ? ?WCE ? ? ? ? 1 > > and with it off, I see > > ? ? ? ?[root at smash ~]# hdparm -W0 /dev/sda > > ? ? ? ?/dev/sda: > ? ? ? ? setting drive write-caching to 0 (off) > ? ? ? ? write-caching = ?0 (off) > > ? ? ? ?[root at smash ~]# sdparm -a /dev/sda | grep WCE > ? ? ? ? ?WCE ? ? ? ? 0 > > You might need to change WCE using > > ? ? ? ?sdparm --set=WCE -a /dev/sda > > or similar ... > >> >> /dev/sda: >> ?readonly ? ? = ?0 (off) >> ?readahead ? ?= 256 (on) >> ?geometry ? ? = 36472/255/63, sectors = 585937500, start = 0 >> [root at dslg1 ~]# [A >> [root at dslg1 ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=128k count=1k oflag=direct >> 1024+0 records in >> 1024+0 records out >> 134217728 bytes (134 MB) copied, 8.10005 seconds, 16.6 MB/s >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Joe Landman >> <landman at scalableinformatics.com> ?wrote: >>> >>> On 04/20/2011 07:28 PM, Mohit Anchlia wrote: >>>> >>>> dd of=/dev/null if=/dev/sda bs=128k count=80k iflag=direct >>>> 81920+0 records in >>>> 81920+0 records out >>>> 10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 83.8293 seconds, 128 MB/s >>> >>> Ok, this is closer to what I was expecting (really ~150 MB/s would make >>> more >>> sense to me, but I can live with 128 MB/s). >>> >>> The write speed is definitely problematic. ?I am wondering if write cache >>> is >>> off, and other features are turned off in strange ways. >>> >>> This is a 2 year old SATA disk >>> >>> [root at smash ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda2 bs=128k oflag=direct >>> dd: writing `/dev/sda2': No space left on device >>> 16379+0 records in >>> 16378+0 records out >>> 2146798080 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 20.8322 s, 103 MB/s >>> >>> Write cache is enabled. ?Turning write cache off (might not be so >>> relevant >>> for a RAID0), >>> >>> [root at smash ~]# hdparm -W /dev/sda >>> >>> /dev/sda: >>> ?write-caching = ?1 (on) >>> [root at smash ~]# hdparm -W0 /dev/sda >>> >>> /dev/sda: >>> ?setting drive write-caching to 0 (off) >>> ?write-caching = ?0 (off) >>> >>> [root at smash ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda2 bs=128k oflag=direct >>> dd: writing `/dev/sda2': No space left on device >>> 16379+0 records in >>> 16378+0 records out >>> 2146798080 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 155.636 s, 13.8 MB/s >>> >>> See if you can do an >>> >>> ? ? ? ?hdparm -W1 /dev/sda >>> >>> and see if it has any impact on the write speed. ?If you are using a >>> RAID0, >>> safety isn't so much on your mind anyway, so you can see if you can >>> adjust >>> your cache settings. ?If this doesn't work, you might need to get to the >>> console and tell it to allow caching. >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Joseph Landman, Ph.D >>> Founder and CEO >>> Scalable Informatics, Inc. >>> email: landman at scalableinformatics.com >>> web ?: http://scalableinformatics.com >>> ? ? ? http://scalableinformatics.com/sicluster >>> phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 >>> fax ?: +1 866 888 3112 >>> cell : +1 734 612 4615 >>> > > > -- > Joseph Landman, Ph.D > Founder and CEO > Scalable Informatics, Inc. > email: landman at scalableinformatics.com > web ?: http://scalableinformatics.com > ? ? ? http://scalableinformatics.com/sicluster > phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 > fax ?: +1 866 888 3112 > cell : +1 734 612 4615 >