[paranoia] Slow ATAPI drive, even with SG drivers

[Adam Hirsch]

Hey there -- Sorry to write in with what must be a very, very common FAQ,
but after reading the FAQ's, troubleshooting docs, and list archives,
recompiling my kernel and various modules umpty times, I've run out of
troubleshooting ideas.

The problem, in a nutshell:

I've got a pair of ATAPI cd drives in my machine, one an 8x4x32 CDRW, and one
a generic el cheapo ATAPI 44x CD.  cdparanoia takes data from the CDRW at a
decent clip, but reads data from the 44x drive at a painfully slow rate; it
took about 2 hours to grab a 5 minute track.  (No errors on the status bar, no
faulty data -- just monumentally slow.)

The solutions I've tried, in a nutshell:
Using the stock ide-cdrom driver, as shipped by RedHat: no dice.
Using the ide-scsi emulation and the /dev/sg drivers: no dice.
Using -Z: no dice.
Using -S and -Z: no dice.

The one thing I haven't tried is changing the number of blocks
CDROM_NBLOCKS_BUFFER is set to, but perhaps that'll be next.

I was all set to chalk it up to "Well, this drive must suck," but then
I've been getting consistently good performance from it under other OS's on
the box -- I know, I know, not a great metric when compared to the rigor
cdparanoia operates with, but still.

Any thoughts?  Am I just doomed to rip from my CDRW?  I got the second drive
specifically to reduce wear and tear on the CDRW, but maybe I should just
stick with the better drive.

Thanks for any thoughts...

The gory details:

It's a 2.2.14 kernel in a RH6.2 machine.  128 megs of ram, and a PIII.

# dmesg | fgrep -i cd
hdc: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W8432T, ATAPI CDROM drive
hdd: ATAPI 44X CDROM, ATAPI CDROM drive
  Vendor: PLEXTOR   Model: CD-R   PX-W8432T  Rev: 1.05
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02
  Vendor:   ATAPI   Model: 44X CDROM         Rev: 2.70
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr1 at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 32x/32x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 4x/40x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver unloaded
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr1 at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 32x/32x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 4x/40x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray

A


-- 
If I regret anything at all, it's the way we wasted our time and skills.
All the false alleys, and bogus friends, the misapplication of our energies.
All the delusions we had about who we were.
<adam at baz.org>                           - John Le Carre, The Secret Pilgrim

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