ATA transfer block sizes in 7.2?

[David Kelly]

Back in 5.x or 6.x the maximum ATA transfer size was 127k or 128k as
witnessed with "systat -v" during big file reads or writes. In the later
versions of 6.x and now 7.2 this appears to be 63k or 64k.

Is there a reason for the smaller transfer size? It seems disk
throughput on my machine is limited by the number of transfers/sec less
than the bytes/sec.

Similar question: in addition to one "normal" drive I have two more
configured as a geom striped volume. Transfers seem to be limited to 43k
on these volumes. Am guessing the volume was allocated with the wrong
multiples of stripe size and/or started on the wrong block, or something
along those lines. I/O rates are about half what they were with same
hardware using vinum.

Think this is my current geom config, its dated March 2006:

drive a device /dev/ad4s1d
drive b device /dev/ad6s1d
volume stripe
plex org striped 279k
	sd drive a
	sd drive b

And believe this was my vinum config (dated Sept 2004):

drive vinumdrive1 device /dev/ad6s1d
drive vinumdrive0 device /dev/ad4s1d
volume vinum0
plex name vinum0.p0 org striped 558s vol vinum0 
sd name vinum0.p0.s0 drive vinumdrive0 plex vinum0.p0 len 319571622s
driveoffset 265s plexoffset 0s
sd name vinum0.p0.s1 drive vinumdrive1 plex vinum0.p0 len 319571622s
driveoffset 265s plexoffset 558s

S.M.A.R.T. reports one of my striped drives is failing, new drives are
in the mail as its also time for an upgrade. When I recreate the new
volume how might I optimize it for performance? Stick with geom, or
something else?

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at HiWAAY.net
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.