[paranoia] Slow ATAPI drive, even with SG drivers

[Monty]

> 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.

CDROM_NBLOCKS_BUFFER only affects atapi.  Hrm, I wonder if this drive supports
more than one extraction command and cdparanoia has accidentally found the
slowest one first (Kenwood drives are like this).

> 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.

That points the finger pretty convincingly at cdparanoia.  Or maybe that the 
drive must be kicked to spin up to > 1x (and cdparanoia does not have that 
feature).

> Forgot to mention: the drive lights momentarily every 2.5 seconds, not
> continuously, and the CPU doesn't appear to be particularly busy.  No "data
> underrun" messages logged.> 

OK, so we *are* waiting for the cdrom drive.  Two questions:

You say you tried -Z; does the extraction take forever only at the beginning/
end, or throughout the whole track?

What version of cdparanoia?  May I see the output from -vQ?

thanks,

Monty

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