From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 12 23:25:30 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D6571065675 for ; Wed, 12 May 2010 23:25:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ahamiltonwright@mta.ca) Received: from smtpx.mta.ca (smtpx.mta.ca [138.73.1.138]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CFD4A8FC0A for ; Wed, 12 May 2010 23:25:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [138.73.29.51] (port=49190 helo=qemg.org) by smtpx.mta.ca with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1OCLIv-0002g9-44; Wed, 12 May 2010 20:25:29 -0300 Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 20:25:29 -0300 (ADT) From: "A. Wright" To: Chuck Swiger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <201005121456.o4CEurEZ078671@lava.sentex.ca> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: ahamiltonwright@mta.ca Cc: FreeBSD - Subject: Re: Long I/O pauses on same mass storage X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 23:25:30 -0000 On Wed, 12 May 2010, Chuck Swiger wrote: > > Thanks for real data to work from. Thanks for the assistance! > There's no signs of surface failure with high reallocated > sectors or anything, but your drive is parking it's heads nearly > 100 times an hour. Someone else suggested this was a "green > firmware" drive, so it might be spinning down and so forth > trying to save power, and the OS is complaining because it takes > a while to spin back up and become online. Thanks for reading the tea-leaves for me and pointing that out. I'm sure that that is the problem, as this would explain all the symptoms, as I am guessing that quite a large I/O queue can be generated if it is insisting on going into park that often. > I've heard rumors that there exists an WDIDLE utility which > might be able to tweak the firmware which might help. I will look into it, and see if there is a path out of the woods here. I'll report back once something else is known. Thanks all, for the help. A.