Making hdparm changes permanent

[handyman]

Hi all, I just recently learned how to use the hdparm command to make a drastic improvement in the performance of my computer. (See www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html) Open office writer used to be VERY SLOW loading, now it loads in a snap and internet browsing is much faster too. My problem is that changes made with the hdparm command are lost when the computer is rebooted. I want to know how to make the changes permanent, the article refers to putting the commands "in your /etc/rc.d/* scripts" but a quick glance in etc at the rc directories leaves me totally confused. Can anyone enlighten me?

[handyman]

Re: Making hdparm changes permanent

Ok I found the solution on my own, just add the command to the bottom of "/etc/hdparm.conf" and it is run at boot. Anyone wishing to try this should read the info at the url in my 1st post and also read the man page "man hdparm8" then run the command "hdparm /dev/hda" to get the relevant info for your hard drive and set the parameters accordingly. It really made a drastic improvement on my computer.

[Rog131]

Re: Making hdparm changes permanent

Useful information (How to ...)

Unofficial Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) Starter Guide
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper

and

Unofficial Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Starter Guide
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy

Unofficial Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Starter Guide
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty - Not yet

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeistyFawn says:

currently scheduled for release on 19 April 2007

[dibl]

Re: Making hdparm changes permanent

At the risk of repeating something I would have learned by reading the linked material, here's what I just now earned about my two WD Raptor SATA drives, and hdparm when used with them.

"hdparm -i" doesn't provide the parameter details, matter of fact it gives an "Inappropriate IOCTL" error message. You want to use hdparm -I. (Capital letter "i"). And for some strange reason it will only work for me when I'm playing super user with sudo -- not sure what that's all about.

Done this way, these particular SATA drives pour out their little hearts -- all kinds of capabilities and modes listed. Not sure exactly which ones are actually enabled under Feisty -- still looking into that, but I'm encouraged.

[cantab]

Re: Making hdparm changes permanent

I just tested hdparm on my system (rather low end laptop, IDE drive), and found tweaks gave some improvement but not much, more like 5-10% than the 5-10 TIMES some documents are claiming.