hdparm is a utility to examine and set certain parameters of an IDE hard drive or CD-Rom. For example, you can:

• set the read speed of a CD-Rom to less than the maximum (hdparm -En where n is the speed (1x, 2x (no x required), etc.))
• get the drive geometry (hdparm -g)
• perform "benchmark" timings on a drive (hdparm -T)
• speed-up access to the hard drive

And many other things. (Do hdparm to get a list.)

hdparm (and its man page) was installed "by default" with my Mandrake 7.2 installations, but was not installed "by default" with my Mandrake 8.2 installation (nor 9.0, IIRC).

Note (from Speeding up Linux Using hdparm):

By the way, notice how we specified the -m16 and -c3 switch again? That's because it doesn't remember your hdparm settings between reboots. Be sure to add the above line to your /etc/rc.d/* scripts once you're sure the system is stable (and preferably after your fsck runs; having an extensive fs check run with your controller in a flaky mode may be a good way to generate vast quantities of entropy, but it's no way to administer a system. At least not with a straight face...)

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Recommended

• (rhk) Speeding up Linux Using hdparm; Rob Flickenger; 06/29/2000 — looks like a decent article — skimmed the first page so far

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• () RandyKramer - 14 Aug 2002
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