[MPlayer-users] Re: hdparm question

[Anssi Saari]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 12:11:50AM +0100, gabor wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> hi,
> 
> 
> after reading the docs about hdparm...
> 
> 
> i wonder if those settings are harmless or not..
 
They are harmless if you have working hardware which most people
have these days.

> because i found a lot of 'interesting switches', like:
> use-dma (d1),
> multiple-io (m),
> unmask-irq (u),
> udma2 (d,X66)..
> 
> i want to know ... does anyone use these options?

Not as such, all those are enabled by default on my system. I've once
needed to use Xsomething to set an old CDROM to udma mode 2 instead of
3, since there were read errors un udma3 and Linux would then reset the
drive and disable DMA altogether. Which produced coasters in my CD writer
if I was burning something while also reading from that CDROM...

> and do you recommend to turn them on for the harddrives too?

I couldn't imagine running a modern system with at least basic DMA
support for harddrives. Any disk access grinds everything to a halt
then.