[Ardour-Users] Subject: Re: disk not able to keep up withardour...

[maillistnoll]

I thought I'd update the list with the final resolution of my disk
performance problems. I could not find any one source of help, so I had to
piece together a lot.
 
As I said in my first post, I have a 3GHz Intel HT processor (a Dell) with a
mirrored (in software) pair of Seagate 250GB SATA drives. 
 
In my research I found that since my drives were appearing as IDE drives
(hda and hdb) I had the choice of running them in PIO mode (typicall slow)
or in DMA mode (typicall fast). I should have been able to use hdparm to put
them into DMA mode, but I consistently received an error indicating that the
system could not do this.
 
Further research pointed me to review my kernel configuration to make sure
that my Intel chipset (ICH6 I think?) drivers were compiled into the kernel.
They were, but after looking deeper I found that there are two sections in
the kernel configuration for disk/controller drivers - one for ATA/MFM...
support and one for SATA support. After I realized this, I enabled the SATA
version of the drivers and recompiled.
 
Now, the drives are recognized as SCSI drives (sda and sdb) as was suggested
they might by someone in response to my original posts and I am getting at
least 130MB/sec throughput versus the 5MB/sec that I was getting before.
 
Lesson learned - make sure you are turning on and off exactly the right
things in the kernel. :-)
 
Thanks for the help!
 
 
--kan--
 


  _____  

From: maillistnoll [mailto:maillistnoll at nollcentral.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 8:53 AM
To: martin.lynch at shaw.ca
Cc: ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] Subject: Re: disk not able to keep up
withardour...


 
Yes, I'm typically recording live stuff, so I only get one chance (take) at
anything.
 
--kan--

  _____  

From: Martin Lynch [mailto:martin.lynch at shaw.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 3:59 AM
To: maillistnoll
Cc: ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] Subject: Re: disk not able to keep up with
ardour...


maillistnoll wrote: 

 
Thanks for the feedback.
 
Unfortunately I'm not in the same scenario you describe. I'm not able to get
through one take with 3-4 tracks.
 
Regarding the mirroring: I am mirroring the drives for the sake of the
system partitions. I've considered changing this configuration, but would
like to understand the root problem first.
 
--kan--

  _____  

From: Martin Lynch [mailto:martin.lynch at shaw.ca] 
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 11:58 AM
To: ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
Subject: [Ardour-Users] Subject: Re: disk not able to keep up with ardour...


I'm having trouble with my disks keeping up with Ardour. I remembered

reading this thread a while back and I've searched through some of the other

FAQs and mailing lists, but can't seem to come to any particular conclusion.



I have a 3GHz HT Intel system (Dell) with a set of mirrored Seagate SATA

drives.



Unlike the previous discussion, though, I am having trouble just getting 3-4

minutes of 3 mono tracks to record at 44.1KHz from a Delta 1010. I've run

Bonnie to test performance (approx. 4MB/sec if I remember correctly) and I

believe it should be more than sufficient, though not optimal. I've been

focusing on the IO scheduler as a possible culprit, but none of the FAQs and

other info that I've found can seem to come to any consensus whether to use

the AS, CFQ, or Deadline schedulers. My default is the AS.



Does anyone have a recommendation?



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