On Sunday 04 December 2011 19:38, Timothy Murphy wrote: > The "slow disk" > [tim at helen ~]$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb > /dev/sdb: > Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.00 seconds = 55.98 MB/sec > ----------------------------------- > Another disk on the same machine > [tim at blanche ~]$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda > /dev/sda: > Timing buffered disk reads: 146 MB in 3.01 seconds = 48.57 MB/sec Here are my results with a PATA drive and a SATA drive: [root at poontang ~]# hdparm -t /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 172 MB in 3.02 seconds = 56.97 MB/sec [root at poontang ~]# hdparm -t /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 300 MB in 3.01 seconds = 99.66 MB/sec Your results are similar to what I get with my PATA drive, so I agree with Ho Chaw Ming that you should check that AHCI is selected. -- Yves Bellefeuille <yan at storm.ca> "La Esperanta Civito ne rifuzas anticipe la kunlaboron de erarintoj, se ili konscias pri sia eraro." -- Heroldo Komunikas, n-ro 473.