CERC RAID5 performance lower than everyone else

[Adam Nielsen]

> Try setting the read-ahead buffer.   I find that helps some.
> 
> /sbin/blockdev --setra 8192 /dev/sda

That helped - it's up to around 12MB/sec now which is almost twice the 
speed :-)  It also peaks at 50-60MB/sec briefly, depending on what I'm 
doing.

> Otherwise, switch to RAID-0 and you will really see an improvement.  Keep a backup.

I think I'll just ditch it in a year's time and stick to Linux software 
RAID - never had a problem with that!

Thanks everyone for all your replies - nice to know I'm not suffering 
alone on this ;-)

Cheers,
Adam.