slow read performance...

[Ian Molton]

Hi.

I've just run bonnie (Im curious :) and got some disappointing figures.

Im running a Duron @ 976MHz, on an ASUS A7M (76x northbridge, via 686B
southbridge)

the machine has 256MB RAM and a seagate ST320413A UDMA 100 harddisc as the
only device on the primary ide interface.

UDMA is /on/, and all in hdparm looks OK - 32 bit IO etc.

write speed is fine (22-30MB/sec) but reads are horribly slow, as little as
9MB/sec and I havent seen >16MB/sec yet.

I am using a 400MB test in bonnie to remove linuxs disc cache from the
equation, as suggested by someone here.

I thought HDDs were supposed to /read/ faster than they write?

if 9MB/sec normal? seems low... I thought UDMA 100 discs were up around the
30MB/sec mark for reads...

or does bonnie just report unrealistic read speeds? the machine 'feels'
responsive enough...

TIA...