On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Michel Lanners wrote: > Well, personally, I would probably not invest in a SCSI controller. > IDE disks and controllers are dirt cheap for very decent performance, > whereas even an oldish fast-wide SCSI controller is still expensive.
I would agree with this. If you have a little money to spend, invest in some RAM and/or a CPU upgrade. My system (an 8500 running Woody and a 2.4.20 kernel built from kernel.org sources) has similar HD numbers as yours, i.e. /dev/sda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 2.10 seconds = 60.95 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 12.76 seconds = 5.02 MB/sec /dev/sda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 2.10 seconds = 60.95 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 12.71 seconds = 5.04 MB/sec /dev/sdb: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 2.11 seconds = 60.66 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 11.82 seconds = 5.41 MB/sec /dev/sdb: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 2.10 seconds = 60.95 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 11.80 seconds = 5.42 MB/sec (both 4.5 GB 4200 or 5400 RPM drives, can't remember right now). But I have a G3 375 MHz CPU (512 KB L2 cache) and 1 GB RAM, and those let me get kernel compile times under 20 minutes. cheers vinai
