Should I enable hdparm?

[James Gray]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> 2008/6/16 James Gray <james at gray.net.au>:
>> Depends on what is causing the delays.  If your hard drive is PATA and not
>> running in DMA mode, then hdparm will help.  If your drive is SATA, then
>> hdparm will be of limited help.
>>
>> Best option is to do some digging (top, vmstat, strace, ltrace etc) and see
>> what is causing the hold up.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> James
> 
> Thanks. There are two IDE drives on this machine, so I will start exploring.

No problem :)  BTW, be careful with hdparm; I've corrupted file systems 
by forcing settings on drives/controllers that weren't supported.

Contrary to "claydoh"'s advice, rather than just "issuing the various 
commands" (which I parsed as "randomly fiddling with settings using 
hdparm"), make sure you know what the change will do, how to test it, 
and whether or not it is supported by your drives/controller.  You've 
been warned ;)

Cheers,

James