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Topic: Poor dd Performance, Laptop dd performance Dell D600< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
gorn Offline





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Joined: Sep. 2005
Posted: Sep. 11 2005,08:06 QUOTE

Guys,

Need a little help with this one. Have a Dell D600 laptop with 2 40GB disk drives (1 internal, 1 in modular bay).  I boot DSL via a USB stick and then use dd to copy the entire primary drive to the modular drive.  Why?  I travel a lot and cannot afford the downtime to reinstall / configure anything.

Problem is that performance of the copy via dd is unacceptably poor.  It now takes around 10 hours to copy hda to hdc.  I have experimented with changing block sizes and also booting DSL to RAM, but no notable improvement.  Here is a little further information.

Maybe someone has had something similar to this.  15 years ago I was a UNIX admin, but in the meantime I have forgotten a hell of a lot.  

root@0[cdrom]# uname -a
Linux box 2.4.26 #1 SMP Sa Apr 17 19:33:42 CEST 2004 i686 unknown

root@0[cdrom]# lscpi
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 81)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 Lf [Radeon Mobility 9000 M9] (rev 02)
0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet (rev 01)
0000:02:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711EC1 SmartCardBus Controller (rev 20)
0000:02:01.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711EC1 SmartCardBus Controller (rev 20)
0000:02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 03)

root@0[cdrom]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads:   1532 MB in  2.00 seconds = 766.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  3.08 seconds =   2.60 MB/sec

root@0[cdrom]# hdparm -tT /dev/hdc
/dev/hdc:
Timing buffer-cache reads:   1528 MB in  2.00 seconds = 764.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  3.07 seconds =   2.61 MB/sec

root@0[cdrom]# time dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=512 count=1953126
1953126+0 records in
1953126+0 records out

real 5m28.150s
user 0m0.690s
sys 4m4.080s


root@0[cdrom]# time dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/null bs=512 count=1953126
1953126+0 records in
1953126+0 records out

real 5m28.150s
user 0m0.690s
sys 4m4.080s
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NotTheMama Offline





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Joined: April 2005
Posted: Sep. 11 2005,08:39 QUOTE

On my embedded DSL 1.4 /bin/dd is a link to /bin/busybox. Busybox is a nice program to work as multiple programs and save diskspace, but there is a downside. Not every thing works as normal. Command ps doesn't need -ef to show everything. And other commands might work differently.

You could try to download gnu-utils.dsl (I think it is called this) and get the "real" dd. Maybe that works better.

HTH.,

Remco
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gorn Offline





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Joined: Sep. 2005
Posted: Sep. 11 2005,11:44 QUOTE

Remco,

Thanks for the tip.  I have the same link to busybox so I'll try to get the real dd and let you know how it works out.

John
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friedgold Offline





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Joined: Mar. 2005
Posted: Sep. 11 2005,16:17 QUOTE

Is dma turned on for your drives?

hdparm -d /dev/hda

should tell you

hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

should turn it on for most drives if it isn't on already. If it is a really old PC you may have to specify the mode with -X at the same time  (read the man page for more details). I think you can enable dma with the cheatcode dma as well.
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undertow Offline





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Joined: Mar. 2005
Posted: Sep. 11 2005,17:22 QUOTE

more info at wiki about hdparm too that could possibly speed things up for you:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Hdparm%2C_using
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6 replies since Sep. 11 2005,08:06 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

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