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Date:      Tue, 18 Jun 2002 17:25:52 +0200
From:      Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ATA Atapi 4.6 Release
Message-ID:  <m3n0tsr4lb.fsf@merlin.emma.line.org>
In-Reply-To: <E17KJst-0003up-00@smart.eusc.inter.net> (Matthias Schuendehuette's message of "Tue, 18 Jun 2002 16:23:02 %2B0200")
References:  <E17KJst-0003up-00@smart.eusc.inter.net>

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Matthias Schuendehuette <msch@snafu.de> writes:

> I would encourage some posters to cool down a bit. There are only a few 
> types of ATA-Disks that support Tagged Queuing and they all work with 
> Write Cache nearly as fast as with WC+TQ.

Before telling others to be quiet: write cache without tagged queueing
is *unsafe* and may corrupt your data, softupdates forth or back. This
is not about speed alone, but about maintaining safety while going fast.

There are exactly two safe bets: 1. write cache switched off or
2. tagged queueing (which implies cache on). With FreeBSD 4.5, this is:
slow or fast. With FreeBSD 4.6, this is: slow or dead slow (because TQ
falls back to PIO after some timeouts).

Which leaves you with the recommendation:

When running FreeBSD 4.6, put these lines in your /boot/loader.conf:

hw.ata.wc="0"
hw.ata.tags="0"
hw.ata.ata_dma="1"
hw.ata.atapi_dma="1"

There are a couple of drives that do support tagged queueing, more than
FreeBSD will even try TQ on. I have heard of no reports of broken TQ on
any other drive than the original IBM DJNA, and that I could not verify
myself.

-- 
Matthias Andree

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