From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Sep 10 17:22:10 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ECCF837B400 for ; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 17:22:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sage-one.net (adsl-65-71-135-137.dsl.crchtx.swbell.net [65.71.135.137]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BAB2843E65 for ; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 17:22:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jackstone@sage-one.net) Received: from sagea (sagea [192.168.0.3]) by sage-one.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g8B0LrS06532; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 19:21:58 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from jackstone@sage-one.net) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20020910192152.00fbeac8@mail.sage-one.net> X-Sender: jackstone@mail.sage-one.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 19:21:52 -0500 To: Tony Landells From: "Jack L. Stone" Subject: Re: DD copy is too slow Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <200209102353.JAA26605@tungsten.austclear.com.au> References: <3.0.5.32.20020910183731.00fbeac8@mail.sage-one.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 09:53 AM 9.11.2002 +1000, Tony Landells wrote: >What kind of disks are involved? > >I was having a similar problem recently and went hunting on the >Maxtor web site, where I discovered an interesting little tech >support note that Maxtor disks are shipped with a "feature" that >verifies all writes until the power has been cycled 10 times. > >They also have a DOS utility that can turn it on, turn it off, >change the counter value, ... > >So out of curiosity I found a DOS boot disk, put the utility on >it, and rebooted the machine to check the status of the write >verify. It came up and said write verification was disabled. > >When I rebooted back to FreeBSD the problem was fixed. > >While it is possible that the reboot I did to run the DOS utility >was the 10th reboot that caused the write verify feature to be >disabled, I don't think so. I had already been doing disk-to-disk >tests and getting decent throughput. It seemed to be more some >bizarre anomaly that arose in the box when we moved it to the >install site, and somehow the couple of reboots we did fixed it. > >Also, the Maxtor disk came in a HP PC with Windows 2000 pre-installed. >Presumably there were at least a couple of reboots involved in HP >installation process, and presumably some sort of QA. Then the PC >had been rebooted here at least a few times. It may not have been >far beyond 10 reboots, but I think it's likely it was beyond it. > >However, that doesn't mean that other people aren't getting bitten >by it, particularly if you buy a "clean" Maxtor disk and drop it >in your FreeBSD box. > >Either way, my suggestion is reboot the box once or twice and see >if it fixes it (as it did for me), and if not and it's a Maxtor >disk you're trying to write to, download their utility, put it on >a DOS boot disk and make sure the write verify flag is off. > >Tony >-- Thanks, Tony... these are Seagate 40GB and ad0 and ad1 were previously used in a RAID-1 array for a short time. I disabled the RAID & added ad2 to use 3 40GB identical HDs on this box as a "build" box and as a backup server. The ones used for RAID HDs have been in service a few months and ad2 is brand new. Obviously, something needs a tweak.... Best regards, Jack L. Stone, Administrator SageOne Net http://www.sage-one.net jackstone@sage-one.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message