cdrecord performance

[James Drabb]

fredex wrote:
<SNIP>
> Have you looked to see if your hard drives and CD burner have DMA
> enabled? If not it MIGHT account for this sort of problem. Perhaps.
> 
> Fred

Yes, my hard drive according to hdparm -Tt /dev/hda:

jim at keelie $ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   1524 MB in  2.00 seconds = 760.22 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.03 seconds =  56.15 MB/sec

My DVDRW drive is set to UDMA 2 according to hdparm -i /dev/hdc and 
shows this for hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

jim at keelie $ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   1552 MB in  2.00 seconds = 774.96 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  3.34 seconds =   2.40 MB/sec

Does 2.4 MB/sec sound right for a DVDRW drive?


Running hdparm /dev/hdc showed this output:

jim at keelie $ sudo hdparm /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
  HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Invalid argument
  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
  using_dma    =  0 (off)
  keepsettings =  0 (off)
  readonly     =  0 (off)
  readahead    = 256 (on)
  HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument


So I turned on 32 bit support and DMA with:
sudo hdparm -c 1 -d 1 /dev/hdc

But running hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc agian show the same numbers:

jim at keelie $ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   1536 MB in  2.00 seconds = 766.20 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  3.19 seconds =   2.51 MB/sec

What do you get if you put a CD in your CD or DVD drive and run hdparm 
-Tt /dev/hdX?

One other note:

I am using the Desktop Kernel for Fedora Core 2 from here:
http://gdj.sourceforge.net/

I also have my cdrom drive mounted with Supermount-ng.

Holy crap BatMan!  I just disabled Supermount-ng and tried a burn of an 
181 MB audio file and the system is running fine!

Before with my DVDROM controlled by Supermount-ng, the max burning speed 
I would get is around 12X while the DVDRW is rated at 40X for normal 
CDR.  Without Supermount-ng, the speed went up into the 30X+ and I had 
normal system response and no jerky mouse.

So I guessed I answered my own question.  Thanks for the prodding.
It is a shame since I really liked Supermount-ng, much more then automount.

Jim Drabb
-- 
James Drabb
Senior Programmer
Davenport, FL USA