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[HowTo] Speed up hard disk access


greeze
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ok, this was pissing me off immensely so I dug into it and have a fix (for Intel chipsets anyway). What it comes down to is, as you suspected, you're not running Ultra-DMA but rather PIO because you don't have a proper driver for your ATA chipset. Assuming you have an Intel system, you need to get the AppleIntelPIIXATA driver installed.

 

If you have XCode installed, you can build it yourself; it's included with the Darwin sources. Go to http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsour...IXATA-17.tar.gz. Extract the archive and open the "AppleIntelPIIXATA.pbproj" file in XCode and hit Command-B to build it. Now you need to fix the permissions: in a command window cd into Build/Development and type "chown -R root AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext". Copy AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext into your System/Library/Extensions folder, reboot, and enjoy a good 20x HD performance boost (that's what I got anyway). Cut my boot time in half too..

 

Or if you prefer, here's a precompiled tarball. Extract the tar.gz file and copy the kext into /System/Library/Extensions.

 

 

Can you repost this please?

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Repost what? He is not here since that post in the forum.

 

I'm trying to get the file he posted initially that automates the process. When clicked on it links to a page telling me there is no file available...

 

I tried the manual approach but only ended up crippling my Ethernet and Wireless connection (it would create a 169.x.x.x IP but no longer connect...) and was forced to do a complete reinstall of x86...

 

suggestions?

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Hi All,

 

Attached is my xbench disk test,

 

i hope they are good as i am confused on whether i have to do this tweaking or not :P

 

Just now after reading i am thinking i might be OK :)

 

 

Regards to all of you and best of luck with hard work!

 

Mutahir

post-7410-1133831424_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 months later...

Sequential 91.67

Uncached Write 100.76 61.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 92.37 52.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 76.77 22.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 101.45 50.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 34.86

Uncached Write 12.00 1.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 72.87 23.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 97.20 0.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 134.43 24.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

some tests it blew, some tests it blew away... what a world...

 

After patching btw... didn't test before, but pc runs faster for sure

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Hi, I'm running 10.4.4 on a MAXTOR PATA HDD with an Intel 6300ESB soutbridge (almost an ICH5R:)) and there is sluggish hdd performance.. however applying the kext in the first post doesn't solve the problem, as well as the system crashes on boot, if I copy over the second kext file as well (the IOATA one, or similar)..

 

I'm stuck, cause it won't recognise my sata disks, so thats why i have to use this pata drive, but 2megs/sec is a littlebit... well.. slow from a dually xeon system:)

 

Does anybody have any idea for this?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I get very poor file I/O performance with 10.4.3 on my Intel box. Any idea why? I haven't tried the fix described in the first post as judging by the replies it does't help anymore. Any ideas?

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I had pretty good disk speed under 10.4.3

I installed 10.4.4 and the disk speed has slowed down by a factor of x15 or so.

I did copy the IOATA from my 10.4.3 disk. (i.e. the fix suggested in this forum)

For some reason, I cannot get the disk access under 10.4.4 to be faster even though it works fine under 10.4.3 and most of the extensions I run are from my 10.4.3 installation.

Looking at kextstat, it looks like, as expected, the problem is that 10.4.4 is using the GenericATA extension which accesses the disk in PIO mode.

Looking at 10.4.3, that installation runs an extention called AppleVAIATA.

I tried copying this extention to my 10.4.4, delete the extension cache and reboot. The result, somewhat un-expected, was that the system did not boot. I get a disk I/O error and in fact when I first tried this I destroyed the entire installation of 10.4.4 and had to re-install.

I have an ASUS P5 motherboard which must have a VAI chipset.

 

Does anyone have the same problem? Is this a chipset support problem? Would using a Darwin extenstion help?

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK, I did the first post and it comes up in yellow text:

 

Failed to load extension com.apple.driver.AppleGenericPCATA.

Couldn't alloc class "AppleGenericPCATAPCIRoot"

 

I thought the whole idea was for it not to use the generic, so this should be a good thing, right? Yet it waits on "Still waiting for root device..." so obviously I've blown something up.

 

I'm running an ASUS NCCH-DL, it has an intel 875p chipset.

 

Anyone got an idea what I messed up?

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Hi Guys,

 

I am running an Acer SA80 Aspire, and unfortunately it seems to have an SiS661GX chipset. I have tried this patch, and it did not seem to work, although I did not take some of the extra steps as suggested by some users.

Am I flogging a dead horse trying to get this to work on an SiS chipset? or do these have Intel IDE/ATA drivers??

 

PS. I got QE2D working nicely on my Radeon 9800SE, so HDD speed is my last hurdle (and SATA too :-)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Aaaaarghhh, I destroyed my installation ! :D I guess I don't have an Intel chipset :angry:

 

Well now I am trying to boot in single user mode to replace the kext files, but I CAN'T !!

 

I tried the -x -s commands on boot screen but it doesn't help : :)

 

Please help me I am stuck there and I don't want to go reinstalling the whole.

 

Thanks

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Aaaaarghhh, I destroyed my installation ! :laser: I guess I don't have an Intel chipset :blink:

 

Well now I am trying to boot in single user mode to replace the kext files, but I CAN'T !!

 

I tried the -x -s commands on boot screen but it doesn't help : :huh:

 

Please help me I am stuck there and I don't want to go reinstalling the whole.

 

Thanks

 

boot from the dvd spawn a terminal and do your repair stuff from there

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Hi folks,

 

The patch doesn't seem to work for me. I'm running 10.4.5 Universal native on a machine with an Intel ICH6-M chipset (full specs on a previous post on [1]). According to the manufacturer, the disk is PATA, but OSX (and a System Rescue CD based on Linux) seem to think it is SATA. The system takes AGES to get to the desktop (and sometimes hangs before it), booting on Single and running a kexstat shows that AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext IS being loaded. Permissions on all extensions are correctly set, and my machine does not have the AppleI386GenericPlatform.kext. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks!

 

[1] http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=14839

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The only question that is slilly is the one that is not asked.

 

AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext is not in that directory, the error message gives you some clue.

 

The AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext is inside in another kext.

goto /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext/Contents/Plugins and there is.

 

I've got the same problem and that post coudn't help me. How do I enter .kext as direktory? I don't have anything like this in my Extensions folder. I end up in the exact same place when I try to copy the downloaded AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext:

 

cp: Users/AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext: No such file or directory

 

 

I'm new to UNIX so it should be simple. Please explain it very simple.

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How do I enter .kext as direktory?

 

rightclick the kext and select 'view package contents'

 

anyway...has anyone managed to get this to work on a NON Intel chipset? I'm dieing to try, but don't have time to mess with it for hours afterwards if it fubars my install...I'm on a Uli chipset btw, M1695.

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