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These days, most hard drives are of the ATA100
or ATA133 specification. The theoretical transfer rate of an ATA100
drive is 100 MBps; an ATA133 drive’s theoretical transfer rate is
133 MBps. Of course, these are theoretical rates.

Many Linux systems use conservative defaults
that could be slowing down your system. At the very least, these
defaults could be preventing your system from reaching the maximum
speeds that your hardware allows.

Like most parts of a Linux system, how Linux
interacts with your IDE hard drives is configurable. You can
accomplish this using the hdparm tool, which allows you to
customize many aspects of any given IDE hard drive device.

Of course, using hdparm requires caution
because your drive could end up corrupting data or failing if you
configure it incorrectly.

To get the information of your device, execute
the following:

hdparm /dev/hda

To get more extended information, use the
following:

hdparm -i /dev/hda

Replace /dev/hda with the IDE device name of
the drive you wish to report on. (hda is the first drive on the
first IDE bus.)

Look for the multcount, IO_support, and
using_dma fields. These fields help you determine if your drive is
using its full capabilities.

Let’s assume that the device in question is an
ATA100 or ATA133 drive using an 80-wire cable. To determine the
speed of the drive, execute the following:

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:  968 MB in  2.00
seconds = 484.00 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  88 MB in  3.05
seconds = 28.85 MB/sec

The results show that the drive is operating at
a fairly decent speed. If your drive is an ATA100 or ATA133 drive
and you’re getting speeds of 1 to 2 MBps, then your drive isn’t
using DMA mode, which you can tell from the hdparm information
noted above. You can also tell this by looking for the using_dma
keyword. (It should have a value of 1 for on.)

To tweak the speed, execute the following:

# hdparm -d1 -c1 -m16 /dev/hda

This turns on DMA mode, specifies the maximum
number of disk sectors to transfer in a single request (older
drives should use -m8), and enables 32-bit transfers to the ATA
controller. Using hdparm /dev/hda should reveal (among other
things) the following lines:

/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)

Some new drives don’t enable these settings on
their own, so you’ll need to use hdparm to achieve the maximum
speed your drive will permit.