[NTLUG:Discuss] hdparm for SATA drives

[David Simmons]

Guys - are there any 'recommended practices' to do for SATA drives to
increase performance like was done for IDE / PATA drives?

is
the 'hdparm' program designed for SATA drives?

When I do a
'hdparm /dev/sdb' - the results are:

/dev/sda:
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 geometry     = 38913/255/63, sectors =
625142448, start = 0

Which is significantly less information
that the PATA drives?  Should I try and change IO_support
modes?  when I try 'hdparm -c3 /dev/sda' I get the following:

/dev/sda:
 setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 3
 HDIO_SET_32BIT failed: Invalid argument
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)

But I
guess it all comes down to this.....here's my results from testing (doing
htparm -Tt /dev/sda):

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached
reads:   3968 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1985.06 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  136 MB in  3.10 seconds
=  43.90 MB/sec

Can I or should I expect more performance
out of SATA 300 drives with today's controllers?

Thanks in
advance,

 dave