[PlanetCCRMA] hard disk optimizations...

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

Hi all, I've been fighting latency on and off for a while and I started
doing a more thorough cleanup of optimizations. While doing that I found
that adding the "-u 1" flag to the hdparm hard disk optimization
actually makes things worse (which makes sense if you actually _read_
the hdparm man page explanation :-)

Anyway, if you are using IDE disks and have experienced sporadic latency
hits and have activated the -u flag, just get rid of it, it might help
(the configuration for that is in /etc/sysconfig/harddisks - read the
Planet CCRMA hard disk optimization page). 

For laptop users that have redhat 8.0: the newer hdparm understands a
couple of parameters that might be of help (as usual, backup your data
before experimenting!):

  -B 255
    disable power management
  -M 254
    hard disk acoustic management (optimize for speed)

Those did make a difference in my case. Read the man page for hdparm for
details. It might make a difference if your particular hard disk
supports those parameters. As usual, handle with care. 

-- Fernando