hi,
i just tried to use reading and writing to the device using dd and 
rwd1a. reading using dd has the same speed for both disks. writing to 
raw device exhibits speeds of approximately 20mb/sec (i didn't check for 
the "faster" drive since i have all the data there... ;))

i created the filesystem again (but this time with bsize=16k. this 
increases cpg value to 42760; newfs reports 92 cylinder groups of 
211.52MB... is this correct? david mentioned something around 55mb for 
8kb blocks being the largest 'cg' size... i have 16block, i.e. i'd 
expect 'cg' to be 110mb...

so it is clear that the problem lies in the filesystem... writing with 
dd to file:
bsize=512 count=100k
44sec vs. 2sec.
bsize=1024 count=50k
20sec vs. 2sec.
bsize=2048 count=25kk
23sec vs. 2sec.

what can i do now? should i boot 1.6.1 floppy and use the old 
disklabel/newfs? update my box?

regards,

-- 
Lubos
_@_"