[CentOS] Install of 5.4 i386 formatting is very slow

Jason Pyeron wrote:
>> What do you get from running 'iostat -kx 5' (be sure to wait
>> until the second report) while the formatting is running?
>>     
>
> avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
>            0.53    0.00   99.47    0.00    0.00    0.00
>
> Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s   r/s   w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz  wait  svctm  %util
> hdb               0.00  1881.32  0.00 27.11     0.00  7663.16   565.44     2.66  98.12  35.34  95.79
>   


looks like its running in PIO IDE emulation mode per...

  * 99% CPU busy in system,
  * 7.7MByte/sec writes,
  * 95% disk utilization.