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From: bamford@cbnewsd.att.com (harold.e.bamford)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: two questions about the 3b1
Message-ID: <1990Aug16.152159.28227@cbnewsd.att.com>
Date: 16 Aug 90 15:21:59 GMT
References: <24776@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 26

In article <24776@boulder.Colorado.EDU> andersom@tramp.Colorado.EDU (ANDERSON MARC O) writes:
> [...]  Anyway, would it be true to say that "getting
>a faster hard drive would increase the speed on my unix system" since most
>of unix is hard drive access rather than processing time?  [...]

I used to have a 7300 with the stock 20MB hard disk with 80 ms
access time.  I upgraded to a 67 MB (formatted) with 28 ms and
noted that EVERYTHING was faster.

	1) ksh used to take about 5 seconds for 2nd instances (ie,
	   not the first invocation of ksh) and after the upgrade,
	   they were practically instantaneous.  First instances 
	   were still slow, but I didn't care since I eventually
	   linked /bin/ksh to /bin/sh and logging in invoked the
	   first instance.  Yes, with both old and new disks I had 
	   done a "chmod +t /bin/ksh"

	2) large compilations (C) and troff jobs took about 1/3 of
	   the original time.  Suspiciously close to the ratio of
	   new vs. old access times.

	3) large nroff jobs ran about twice as fast.

I was amazed (and pleased).

-- Harold