# hdparm -t Hmm..  suspicious results ???

## crimson

This is odd, I wanted to test my hard drive performance, and hdparm -t /dev/hda used to work, but now this is what I get :

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffered disk reads:  -84 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

Hmm.. suspicious results: probably not enough free memory for a proper test.

I've got 186 / 256 MB free.. I don't quite understand.  I've also tested it with the default PIO mode, and DMA off, and it still didn't work.  Maybe this has to do with a new version of hdparm, because when I first installed Gentoo this worked.  I can still set my transfer speeds, I just can't test them.

Also, this doesn't happen for /dev/hdb.

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## Danrol

I get the same problem.  Its only happened recently after an emerge -u world

If I specify the partition, e.g.  'hdparm -tT /dev/hda1' it works, if I just use /dev/hda it doesn't......

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## crimson

I tried specifying /dev/hda1 and I still get the error :

/dev/hda1:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   -106 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  -53 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

Hmm.. suspicious results: probably not enough free memory for a proper test.

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## TwistedKestrel

This probably doesn't help, but my box has 32MB of RAM ... it swaps out just to call hdparm, I think  :Razz:  ... but it provides coherent results.

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda1:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  2.65 seconds = 48.30 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  7.92 seconds =  8.08 MB/sec

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## Delphiki

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   -3008 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  -1504 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

Hmm.. suspicious results: probably not enough free memory for a proper test.

This is almost certainly a bug in the latest hdparm.. I'm running version 5.3-r2. What about everyone else?

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## crimson

I'm running hdparm 5.3-r2 as well.  You're right, it must be a version bug, because before when I had the old version it worked fine, and I haven't made any significant changes since then.

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## sa

ha!

mines slower than yours (or something)

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   -3458 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  -1729 MB in  0.00 seconds =  -inf kB/sec

there is a bug report here.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16822

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## crimson

lol, well wouldn't you consider it to be really fast?  I mean absolute value says  negative MB is the same as positive MB.  So basically this wonderful (buggy) new version of hdparm lets us know our hard drives are way too fast for it to even calculate.  By the way, I unmerged and got the old version (5.2) and it worked just fine, so consider that.

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## di1bert

Yup...5.3 is a buggy release. I just emerged 5.2-r2 and it's working again.

Spoke to a friend of mine who uses a different fellow (don't feel sorry for him, it's his own choice) and he had the same thing.

Wonder if a bug report has been filed ?

Bye Bye  :Smile: 

di1bert (~matt)

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