Using command lshw will show my RAID controller as a
3ware Inc 7xxx/8xxx-series PATA/SATA-RAID
I found an interesting article at the
www.3ware.com website:
General performance tuning tips:
For Linux kernel 2.6, If you enter the following command:
blockdev --getra /dev/sda
it will list the current read ahead cache settings for block device sda.
If you enter the command: blockdev --setra X /dev/sda
i.e.
blockdev --setra 16384 /dev/sda
it will set the read ahead cache to 16384. (Note: 16384 is just an example value. You will have to do testing to determine the optimal value for your system). The OS will read-ahead X pages, and throughput will be higher.
After settings this parameter my disk became 49.84 % Faster !!!
Because my default read ahead cache was much less !!!
I did check the speed with: hdparm -tT /dev/hda
You need to have hdparm package to test.