Dean S. Messing wrote:
Thanks Rick. It's in "D" state only about 5-10% of the time. Yet
disk writes are occuring (according to the spikes and numbers in
gkrellm) for 1 second or so, every 2 seconds. So that either points
to random number computation or the wait needed to let the new
magnetic orientation 'set'. Not sure.
Dean
I would expect it to be write buffering. It may be the time it takes
to fill the write buffers, and then write them to disk, and/or write
buffering on the drive.
I know how to turn off write buffering on a mounted partition, but
not when writing directly to a drive. You can probably turn off
drive write buffering using hdparm.
You may be able to improve the time by tweaking the size of the
writes to the drive. Take a look at the "USB I/O performance" thread.
Mikkel
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!