I'm working on a project that has a several year old Dell PowerEdge
server. It has dual Pentium Pro 200 processors and a total of 256MB of
main memory. It also has four 8.5 GB disk drives hooked up to a Power
Edge Raid Controller (PERC) - I think it is the oldest model made.

The controller provides hardware Raid 0,1, and 5, and I have three of
the drives as a logical volume on a Raid 5 array. The problem is that
hdparm reports the most awful read times, on the order of 5.5MB/sec.
I've done google searches and found other folks reporting similar
transfer times, but I have to believe that the controller can do better.

1) Anyone have experience tweaking these controllers?
2) Any ideas from other controllers that might be helpful? I have the
controller set to use ReadAhead and Write-Through modes.
3) New hardware is not likely an option. This box was donated to an
organization that is not flush with cash.
4) I was considering starting over, but using RAID 1 instead. I have a
gut feel that this will be substantially faster.
5) Dell support is not helpful.

-- 
Jim Kaufman		mailto:jmk at linuxforbusiness.net
Linux Evangelist	cell: 612-481-9778		
public key 0x6D802619	fax:  952-937-9832
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Many are called, few volunteer.