psfales@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (Peter Fales) (08/29/89)
Well, I tried out Lenny's handy disk exerciser. (It really gave that poor disk a work out - the table was actually rocking back and forth). My results are still puzzling - I can't get the disk to speed up, but I can't get it to slow down either. The procedure I used was: 1) Change the step rate in the VHB using iv -u 2) Reboot 3) Verify the change with iv -t 4) Run the "testit" script which does a series of long seeks, then a series of random seeks. 5) Grep for "Average" in the results file which prints the average for the long seeks, and the average for the random seeks. My disk is a Miniscribe 6085: 67MB, 1024 sectors, 8 heads, 28 msec. Step rate 0: long_rand0:Average seek time: 9 long_rand0:Average seek time: 5 Step rate 14: (Should be faster?) long_rand14:Average seek time: 9 long_rand14:Average seek time: 5 Step rate 13: (Should be MUCH slower) long_rand13:Average seek time: 9 long_rand13:Average seek time: 4 (!!) The last results have me still thinking that something is wrong with the procedure - the software is somehow not using the step rate parameter from the VHB, but I don't know why not. -- Peter Fales AT&T, Room 5B-420 2000 N. Naperville Rd. UUCP: ...att!peter.fales Naperville, IL 60566 Domain: peter.fales@att.com work: (312) 979-8031