Originally Posted By: mlord
Originally Posted By: altman
cat (treating it as a char device)

The device is a block device, regardless of the program opening/reading from it.

cat uses 32KB buffers by default in such situations.
The kernel reads a maximum of about 64KB at a time from IDE drives.


I understand that, but isn't it going to be going through at least one more set of buffers using cat vs dd? Memory bandwidth isn't amazing on the empeg either smile