Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:4272 comp.sys.att:8216 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!n8emr!uncle!jbm From: jbm@uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att Subject: Re: timing a hard drive in unixpc Message-ID: <618@uncle.UUCP> Date: 5 Dec 89 09:19:38 GMT References: Reply-To: jbm@uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) Organization: U.N.C.L.E. Lines: 31 In article wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) writes: ... >In other words, if I have a drive that claims average seek times of, >say 28ms, is there are way to measure if it's in the right ballpark? >I'm not interested (much) in measuring stuff like rotation speed of >the platters (sounds like an oscilloscope deal, huh?). Sure, but it's crude 1. Shutdown UNIX. 2. Boot the floppy diag disk. 3. Press [Return] 4. At the "> " prompt enter "s4test" 5. At the "expert> " prompt enter "6,0" to re-cal the disk 6. At the "expert> " prompt enter "6,5" to do 1000 random seeks. 7. Time out step 6, repeat 5 and 6 a few times I've never done this, and I don't have good documentation on the drives I've got to compare measured values aginst claims. Ok, everybody **WHO KNOWS WHAT KIND OF DRIVE THEY HAVE** do the above random seek test 5 times and send me the time for all 5. Don't forget step 5 between each test, or you'll get crazy times. I'll run it on all the old 5M drives I've got and send out a summary. DO IT RIGHT NOW, or I'll never get it out! I'll cut it off in a week. The above test is NOT a blind seek, after each seek, a header is read to verify that the head got to the right track. John -- John Bly Milton IV, jbm@uncle.UUCP, n8emr!uncle!jbm@osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu (614) h:252-8544, w:469-1990; N8KSN, AMPR: 44.70.0.52; Don't FLAME, inform!