Optimize hard drive access performance

Simple steps for optimizing HARD DRIVE access performance is give below:-



** Hdparm:-
      [The following optimizations techniques can be applied to (E)IDE drives to utilize 32 bit I/O & DMA more effectively. ]
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Step 1:-

**Get info: hdparm /dev/hda 
**Get more info: hdparm -I /dev/hda 
**Test Speed: hdparm -tT /dev/hda 
**Increase Speed: hdparm -d1 -c3 -u1 /dev/hda 






Step 2:-

-d1: Turn on DMA (0: off) 
-c3: IDE chipset support 
0: Disable 
1: Enable 
3: 32 bit transfer 
 
-u1: Get/set interrupt umask. Driver ignores other interrupts during processing of disk interrupts. (0: off) 
 
Test Speed Again: hdparm -tT /dev/hda 
 
The Red Hat 7.1+/8.0 configuration uses /etc/rc.sysinit to call scripts /etc/sysconfig/harddisks. 

(Earlier systems used: /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhda, /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhdb, etc) to run hdparm upon boot. 
 
File: /etc/sysconfig/harddisks: 

    USE_DMA=1
    EIDE_32BIT=1

**Note:- Turn off hdparm DMA access: hdparm -d0 /dev/hda 
Links: 

** hdparm man page.
-Optimizing hard drive performance with hdparm. 
  (ATA, UDMA & hdparm)


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