> > On 09/13/2010 12:12 AM, Marcus D. Leech wrote: > >> I have a new F12 system that is experiencing *agonizingly slow* SATA HDD >> performance, and I >> can't figure out why. No errors messages at all, just *really slow*. >> > Sounds like a bad disk to me. Run some diagnostic with smartctl (from > the smartmontools package). What does 'smartctl -H /dev/sda' return ? > (replace sda by your disk name if it's different). > > What's the content of the error log ? (smartctl -l error /dev/sda) A > non-empty error log is a good sign the disk is on the down curve. > > Next, run a quick self test (smartctl -t short /dev/sda), wait 2 minutes > then check the result with "smartctl -l selftest". > > If that succeeds, run a long test (smart -t long /dev/sda), which takes > about 2 hours. > OK, I"ll check that out. In the mean-time, this is a WD Caviar GREEN drive, which I understand has the intensely-brain-dead "feature" that it'll unload the heads after 8 seconds of idle, which may be part of the problem, since I have *lots* of spare memory, and the kernel only flushes every 30 seconds, which means that it'll have to wait for the heads to re-load almost every time it flushes. There's supposed to be a DOS-based utility from WD to change the timers (or turn them off). I might end up buying a different drive! -- Marcus Leech Principal Investigator Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium http://www.sbrac.org -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines