dump runs at ~ 4 MB pr. second using Fedora Core 2 instead of the ~ 33 MB pr. second I am used to from previous distributions !

Problem:
dump of an entire partition on one disk to a file on an EIDE disk on another controller progresses at the slooow speed of approx. 4 MB pr. second

Using the same kernel on the same machine but with a heavily upgraded Redhat 7.3 instead of Fedora Core 2, dump progressed at a rate of 16-33,6 MB pr. second depending on which disk was being dumped. Write speed to the disk being written to is limited to 33,6 due to long EIDE cables.

Details:

During dump with Fedora Core 2 the system load is between 2,2 and 3,2, the three dump threads are consuming 1-3% cpu and less than 2 MB of memory.

During dump with Fedora Core 2 free reports that "buffers" is around 0,75 GB and "cached" around 0,65 GB during dump. Se below for snapshots.

System:
   Fedora Core 2
   2.6.8.1 kernel compiled for SMP
   Dual Athlon
   1,5 GB RAM
   1,5 GB swap space

free:

   before starting dump

bash-2.05b# free
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1555436     129140    1426296          0       4460      26456
-/+ buffers/cache:      98224    1457212
Swap:      1509352      92368    1416984

while dump is running (the numbers stays pretty much the same for the entire run of dump)

bash-2.05b# free
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1555436    1547356       8080          0     735380     629692
-/+ buffers/cache:     182284    1373152
Swap:      1509352     120756    1388596