Is the 'hdparm' command giving incorrect results?

Whether you are using Linux on the desktop or as a server, it's still good that you're using Linux. Linux related questions go here.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
impulse()
Forum Regular
Posts: 748
Joined: Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:36 am
Location: Staffordshire, UK
Contact:

Is the 'hdparm' command giving incorrect results?

Post by impulse() »

This is probably more hardware related than Linux related.

I stumbled upon the 'hdparm' command today which I was very impressed with, I soon got onto speed testing every HDD I had access to. I noticed strange results on 1 server though, it had 2 HDD, 1 SATA and 1 IDE but the IDE was returning a higher read speed. Here are my results, hopefully somebody could explain the reasons for these:

hdparm -t /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
Timing buffered disk reads: 100 MB in 1.54 seconds = 65.04 MB/sec

hdparm -t /dev/hdb1
/dev/hdb1:
Timing buffered disk reads: 226 MB in 3.02 seconds = 74.84 MB/sec
User avatar
Jenk
DevNet Master
Posts: 3587
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2005 6:24 am
Location: London

Post by Jenk »

What cache does each disk have?
impulse()
Forum Regular
Posts: 748
Joined: Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:36 am
Location: Staffordshire, UK
Contact:

Post by impulse() »

Can this be told with the hdparm command?
User avatar
volka
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 8391
Joined: Tue May 07, 2002 9:48 am
Location: Berlin, ger

Post by volka »

Take a look at http://www.tomshardware.com/de/festplat ... 11-16.html and compare the first and the last diagram.
s-ata doesn't automatically mean "always faster than ide" ;)
Post Reply