Disk access is slowing my Eee PC

Wojciech Puchar wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl
Fri Aug 29 00:18:33 UTC 2008


> I've successfully installed FreeBSD 7-STABLE on my Eee PC 900. Just
> one problem. Quite regularly the machine becomes unresponsive. I asume
> because of something reading from or writing from the SSD, because it
> always happens when the disk activity indicator is lit and it stops
> immediately when it's turned off again. Sometimes it lasts as long as
> 20-30 seconds, just when using Firefox, OOo or similar.
>
> Any ideas on how to deal with this? And just as interresting; what's the cause?

just an idea (i don't have EEE so it's ideas) - EEE simulates IDE drive 
through flash just like USB drives, adding "mapping layer" to simulate 512 
byte sectors writes and to prevent flash wornout.

this is VERY inefficient for random writes on USB flashdrives, and 
possibly here too.

as long as NAND flash chips won't be directly accessible, and some 
flash-designed filesystem will be writted it will be like that.


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