Slow IDE with Nforce3

[Tim Schmidt]

On 6/24/06, JimD <Jim at keeliegirl.dyndns.org> wrote:
> Do you see any output in dmesg about the drive?  Do you have a spare
> hard drive you can try on the same ide with the same cable?  If so, use
> the dapper live cd and boot up.  Then just do the hdparm -Tt stuff to
> see if you get good performance.  Also try the spare hard drive on your
> secondary IDE channel.
>
> Trying a different kernel is a good idea as well.  I have an Nforce4
> with SATA II and get about 60 MB/s on dapper.

OK, just so there's some resolution to this problem on the list...
installing smartmontools and running smartctl -a showed an inordinate
amount of seek errors...  in the millions or billions.  Installing a
different drive nets me decent performance (32 Mb/s).  Dying drive, no
dmesg errors, smartcrl is awesome.

End of problem :)

--tim