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Date:      Wed, 05 Apr 2000 20:07:26 -0600
From:      "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@FreeBSD.org>
To:        mjacob@feral.com
Cc:        Andrew Heybey <ath@niksun.com>, freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: kern/17153 (was: newfs on IBM disks slower than Seagate disks?) 
Message-ID:  <200004060207.UAA24407@caspian.plutotech.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 05 Apr 2000 18:59:28 PDT." <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004051855221.7415-100000@beppo.feral.com> 

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>> Newfs of a ~16GB partition (as performed by sysinstall, so the newfs
>> arguments are the same) is *much* slower on IBM 18GB 10K RPM LVD disks
>> versus similar Seagates.  Systems are otherwise identical (same
>> controller (onboard Adaptec AIC7896), same motherboard, same amount of
>> RAM).  Once newfs'd, bonnie and iozone give similar performance for
>> the two disks.  Rawio also gives similar numbers for the two.
>> 
>> Running 3.2-RELEASE.
>> 
>> IBM disks are DMVS18V.
>> Seagates are Cheetah ST318203LW.
>> 
>> Why would this be the case?


IBM usually ships with the write cache disabled.  Seagate almost
always has it enabled.  As newfs is a "single blocking I/O at a time"
kind of application, the additional write latency causes a degradation
in performance.  When going through the filesystem, this latency is
hidden by the buffer cache.

You can view mode page 8 with camcontrol to determine the settings for
your drives.  Man camcontrol for details.

--
Justin



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