[rescue] tape drive with no SCSI

[Sammy Ominsky]

Phil Brutsche wrote:

>         hdparm -d1 -X66 <device>
> 
> where <device> is your hard drive.
> 
> It will speed things up tremendously, provided you have a ATA33 or
> better hard drive installed and the drive is the only device on the
> chain (if it's not the only device on the chain then all bets are off).


Um, from the man pages:

 -X     Set the IDE transfer  mode  for  newer  (E)IDE/ATA2
        drives.  This is typically used in combination with
        -d1 when enabling DMA to/from a  drive  on  a  sup
        ported  interface  chipset (such as the Intel 430FX
        Triton), where -X34 is used to select multiword DMA
        mode2 transfers.  With systems which support Ultra
        DMA burst timings, -X66 is used to select  UltraDMA
        mode2 transfers (you'll need to prepare the chipset
*>      for UltraDMA beforehand).  Apart from that, use  of   <*
*>      this flag is seldom necessary since most/all modern   <*
*>      IDE drives default to their  fastest  PIO  transfer   <*
*>      mode  at  power-on.  Fiddling with this can be both   <*
*>      needless and risky.                                   <*


Also, assuming this _is_ necessary for some reason, does he really want
-X66 or would 67 be better? I have to admit I don't know much about IDE,
but according, once again, to the man page, for UltraDMA it's whatever
mode plus 64. Is PIO mode 2 better than 3 or would he want it for some
other reason? Not knowing, I assume 3 is preferable just because it's a
higher number.


---sambo