Hi,
My gift for 2003 to those owners of A7V133 and other motherboard that have
(and use) an on-board Promise ATA100 or ATA66 controller, and that have
switched off the Promise BIOS to allow faster booting. And I know for a fact
that lots of linux users own a board like this.
Don't switch off the Promise BIOS, even if you don't boot from a harddrive
attached to this controller. Appearently the BIOS initializes the
controller+drive better than the linux driver by itself.
After I changed the following setting in the BIOS
"Load Onboard ATA BIOS" from "Disabled" to "Auto",
the performance of my harddisk attached to the Promise controller improved
by a dazzling 140% (as measured by hdparm -t). And it was very well
noticible without the use of hdparm. Unfortunately booting takes a little
longer, because the BIOS needs some time to detect and initialize the other
harddisks, but pays off.
The result from hdparm -t /dev/hde ("Load Onboard ATA BIOS: Disabled"):
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.35 seconds = 19.11 MB/sec
The result from hdparm -t /dev/hde ("Load Onboard ATA BIOS: Auto"):
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.35 seconds = 46.31 MB/sec
The result from hdparm -t /dev/hda (independent of above setting,
evidently):
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.35 seconds = 40.12 MB/sec
And for completeness, yes, I have played with X69 parameter and alike, and
these cause my system to hang.
WKR,
--
Vik
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