One thing which makes a big difference in IO speed is tweaking the various mount options: For your NFS mounts, the following is a good start (maybe proto=tcp if your server supports it): rsize=8192,wsize=8192,hard,intr,vers=3,proto=udp For ext3, mount with "data=writeback"[1], and for reiserfs mount with "notail" options. If you've got it compiled into your kernel, XFS is worth trying too. It is quite speedy. Guy [1] Check the man page for what this does; if you machine goes down in the middle of a file write you stand an increase chance of that file getting mangled; the filesystem itself should be OK. -- Dr. Guy Coates, Informatics System Group The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK Tel: +44 (0)1223 834244 ex 7199