From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 12 13:01:41 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C78D216A420 for ; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:01:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Received: from mh1.centtech.com (moat3.centtech.com [207.200.51.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6476E43D76 for ; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:01:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Received: from [10.177.171.134] (dhcp-171-134.centtech.com [10.177.171.134]) by mh1.centtech.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k0CD1aA5080829; Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:01:37 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Message-ID: <43C65332.6060009@centtech.com> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:01:38 -0600 From: Eric Anderson User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20060110) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Christoph Kukulies References: <200601120948.k0C9mcqR092895@www.kukulies.org> In-Reply-To: <200601120948.k0C9mcqR092895@www.kukulies.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.87.1/1239/Thu Jan 12 05:36:22 2006 on mh1.centtech.com X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: increasing dd disk to disk transfer rate X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:01:41 -0000 Christoph Kukulies wrote: >My notebooks' hard disk, a Hitachi Travelstar 80 GB starts to develop read >errors. I have FreeBSD and Win XP on that disk. Although FreeBSD ist still >working , the errors in the Windows partition are causing Windows do ask for a >filesystem check nearly everytime I reboot the computer. One time the >error was in the hibernate.sys file, which impedes powering up quickly after >a hibernate. > >Anyway, I decided to buy a second identical hard disk and tried to >block by block copy the old disk to the new one using > >dd if=/dev/ad2 of=/dev/ad3 conv=noerror > > Specify a larger block size - the default is 512bytes, which is not efficient for what you are doing. Maybe 1mb would be the right number. >The process is running now since yesterday evening and it is at 53 MB >at a transfer rate of about 1.1 MB/s. > >In case the the result being unusable I would like to find a way to make this >copying faster. > >Any disk expert here? My motherboard is an ASUS P4S8X with an on board >promise controller (currently not in use). System disk is >on IDE1 and the two 80GB disks are master/slave on IDE2 bus. > > Also, put the disks on separate IDE busses - one disk on ide1, the other on ide2. This will help a lot.. >I wonder wether I could get better results (transfer rate) when attaching the >disks to copy to the promise IDE bus. > >And another question: > >Is there a way to tweak the driver (be it the FreeBSD promise driver >or the normal ata driver) to use more retries on errors so that I >have the chance to copy everything or nearly everything of the already >degrading hard disk? > Not sure about that.. Eric -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Anderson Sr. Systems Administrator Centaur Technology Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------