pitiful performance of an SATA150 drive

[Brian Candler]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 12:05:17AM -0500, Mikhail T. wrote:
> I installed a new 500Gb SATA drive into my 6.1 system and am greatly
> disappointed with its performance. Although straight reading is
> Ok at around 32Mb/s, the writing is never more than 7Mb/s (as reported
> by `systat 1 -vm' while running `cat < /dev/zero > /dev/ad8').
> 
> I reported this a few months ago (running 6.0 then), and one of the
> suggestions was, the drive is bad. Well, I'm seeing the same with its
> replacement...
> 
> Also, KNOPPIX-4.0.2 can write to the drive at 22Mb/s (using dd).

Just to be clear: this is Knoppix running on the *same* machine as you've
been testing FreeBSD? (In other words, you've not unplugged the drive and
plugged it into a different PC or controller?)

Aside: why are you using cat under FreeBSD, but dd under Knoppix? I'd use dd
everywhere for consistency.

Regards,

Brian.