Very slow ripping

[Stephen R Laniel]

With hdparm set as follows

/dev/hdc:
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)

I'm occasionally getting better read speeds -- for instance,
right now I'm ripping at something like 3.3x -- but
certainly not up to the 24x capacity of the drive. The CPU
is hardly taxed at all -- the GNOME meter shows it somewhere
around 25%. Periodically I get rip-speed spikes up to the 4x
range. On the other side of the apartment is a desktop
machine equipped with two CD-ROM drives, each of which gets
up to 8x regularly. What do you think its secret is? (I
don't have sudo access on that machine, so I can't install
hdparm there.)

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/