Re: [PATCH] 2.4.10 improved reiserfs a lot, but could still be better

[Matthias Andree]

Could you please only quote the relevant parts, particularly, would you
erase deeper nesting of quotes in your replies? That'd help a lot of
people transfer less data they can still easily get from their own
mailer at a keypress. Thanks a lot.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Jorge Nerín wrote:

> Who says test.zero is a linear file and it's not scattered around the 
> whole disk and the fs layer is filling holes...? If it's the case the 
> write cache is a BIG win, just think that the fs writes a chunk at the 
> beggining of the disk, then another chunk at the end, then another near 
> the beginning, then...  you get the picture, in this case the disk 
> reorders the seeks to best fit.
> 
> If you want to try a REAL linear write do a dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hde7 
> or whatever unused partition you have.

I did, and it showed almost the same behaviour, twice as fast with write
cache turned on.

Scattering the writes would (usually) only happen on a nearly filled
disk.