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Date:      Thu, 11 Oct 2001 23:19:26 -0700
From:      "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Slow Installation
Message-ID:  <F216Aluo3npvqnJNeO900004a78@hotmail.com>

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I've seen this alot with certain models of CD drive. 52 does not mean fast, 
necessarily. For example, a Plextor 40X ultra-wide SCSI drive can outperform 
almost every other drive in most situations.
One thing many drives do is read data, spin-down if ANY pause occurs, and 
then spin back up to read more data. In many cases, certain drives will 
spend about 90% of their time spinning down and back up rather than reading. 
This is especially bad with drives designed to hold off on reading data 
until reaching full speed (or close)
Many drives seem to be optimized for the fastest possible linear reads, such 
as reading large files or CD audio that don't cause the head to move much. 
For scattered data, the spindle speed of the CD-ROM doesn't really matter 
much--it's the access time and whether or not the drive maintains its top 
speed.

Many faster drives, Kenwood TrueX drives not included, spin down very 
quickly after hitting their top speed. To protect the motor from burning 
out, to prevent the CD from getting very hot or vibrating, or just to reach 
a high speed for a short time for marketing reasons--I do not know.

Does your drive seem to whir faster and slower, especially when installing 
the ports collection?
You might try using a different CD-ROM drive. What brand is yours? I may be 
able to find the specs.

Another thing it may be--
I have occasionally had problem installing X 3.36 from the CD during regular 
installation. (Whether this is just me or not, I do not know) Sometimes I 
will get data errors from any CD drive that reads it, and sometimes it will 
try to read a file, pause for 4-7 minutes, and read another file. Very 
strange.

Try not installing anything from the X branch during the regular install 
(use ports)
I wouldn't normally suggest this, but this has happened to me with 4 
versions of FreeBSD and with 3 CD-ROM drives, 2 SCSI and one IDE. I have no 
idea why.

>I am installing from a 52x cdrom drive. cd is from the wind-river 4-cd 
>pack.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Denny Jodeit" <denny@jodeit.com>
>To: <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG>
>Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2001 10:04 AM
>Subject: Re: Slow Installation
>
>
> > > > Hi
> > > >
> > > > Installation of freebsd seems to take very long on my system. The 
>base
> > > > installation (300M) had to be left overnight for it to be complete. 
>Is
> > > there
> > > > any way of speeding it up. I have and Athlon 850,8GB hdd and 256 MB
>RAM
> > > >
> > > > Regards
> > > > Gautham
> > > >
> > > >
> > > In my pentium 200 MMX with a 24x cdrom it last between 10 - 20 
>minutes,
> > > something is wrong with your machine.
> > >
> >
> >
> > not necessarily.......if the installation in question is an FTP
>installation
> > and the path to the FTP server chosen is slow, this is not uncommon
> >
> >
> > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> > with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
>
><< Wipro_Disclaimer.txt >>


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