High memory pressure makes system nearly unresponsive. 324

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 19:41:25 +0000 (UTC), Jeremiah DeWitt Weiner

They've both been running in this box for over a year at udma5 with no problem I've noticed, except what I'm seeing now.

The udma mode was properly auto-detected as 4 when the drive was "hard" set to udma4. I'm not too keen on fiddling with the firmware settings more than I need to. I've "forced" udma4 a couple of times via hdparm, without the firmware adjustment, as well. Doesn't make any difference that I can tell. In fact...

...curously enough, I saw no difference in the hdparm -tT results when udma4 mode was set compared to udma5. Typical reults in udma5 mode for each drive are:

(keep in mind that hda is a 5400 RPM drive, and hdb is 7200 RPM)

dev-hda: Timing cached reads: 2096 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1048.00 MB-sec Timing buffered disk reads: 90 MB in 3.02 seconds = 29.80 MB-sec

dev-hdb: Timing cached reads: 2096 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1048.00 MB-sec Timing buffered disk reads: 138 MB in 3.01 seconds = 45.85 MB-sec

...and the results are the same with udma4. I suppose the drives are going as fast as they physically can, in either udma mode.

Yeah... I realize that I can expect some slowdown. Something really must be "off" though, IMO, to make the system nearly freeze for several seconds at a time like it does. Damned if I can find out what it is, though.

Anyhow... I've pretty well resigned myself to the idea that it's just going to be that way for now. Before long, I think I'll be putting those SATA connectors to use.

ciao, Jonathan

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