Comment 84 for bug 119730

Similar for me, BUT - it is slow to at all write to device (even not to file system!)

/dev/sda13:
 Timing cached reads: 1518 MB in 2.00 seconds = 759.03 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 186 MB in 3.02 seconds = 61.64 MB/sec

root@limcore:/mnt# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda13
297645+0 records in
297645+0 records out
152394240 bytes (152 MB) copied, 23.5958 s, 6.5 MB/s

So x10 slower when actually writting data (even to raw device)

uname -a
Linux limcore 2.6.24-22-generic #1 SMP Mon Nov 24 19:35:06 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

 hdparm /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 IO_support = 0 (default)
16-bit)
 HDIO_GET_UNMASKINTR failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 HDIO_GET_KEEPSETTINGS failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 readonly = 0 (off)
 readahead = 256 (on)
 geometry = 60801/255/63, sectors = 976773168, start = 0