Hdparm

is hard disk drive hardware parameters]].

Emerge
Install :

OpenRC
To set parameters on boot, edit the configuration file:


 * sdX_args : Set parameters for the given drive (replace sdX with the right device file name).
 * discX_args : Set parameters for the given disc drive.
 * cdromX_args : Set parameters for the given optical drive.
 * all_args : Set parameters for all drives.

For example, to disable power management for all drivers and enable the DMA feature for :

When finished modifying the configuration file be sure to add the service to the default runlevel so that it can start at system boot:

General
Show identification and feature info:

Benchmarking drives
Be sure that no other programs are stressing the drive at the time of testing:

Get current settings
This is not consistent: for some features the current values can be found in the common info, for other features must be called with the right parameters, but without any value, like  :

Set features by put the value directly behind the parameter (without space), e.g. to enable the DMA mode:

The following tables introduces the most common parameters. For a complete list see the hdparm man page.