Comment 32 for bug 624510

However, as I reported originally, running Oneiric 11.10 on same hardware and reading from same USB drive I get good read speed around 33 MB/s which tends to indicate to me that the read peformance of my USB drive is not the issue.

Here's what hdparm reports for that drive on on Oneiric.

axismann@Hyperion:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads: 2800 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1399.92 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 104 MB in 3.01 seconds = 34.54 MB/sec

However, when I try to do the same thing on Lucid, I get miserable read performance.

owner@Pluto:~$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads: 2424 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1211.76 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 16 MB in 3.09 seconds = 5.18 MB/sec

I did observe and report that the write peformance on Lucid is ok. It's just the read performance that isn't any good on Lucid.

Does that make sense to you that the drive would read at 34 MB/sec on Oneric if it's read peformance were indeed bad?

It seems to me that the evidence indicates a problem with Lucid. The symptom is poor read peformance on Lucid with normal read performance for that drive on Oneric.