Just a shot in the dark:
If you are using IDE disks maybe DMA isnt turned on.
To check the rough speed of your disk(in this example /dev/hda) install the package hdparm and do
Code:
hdparm -Tt /dev/hda
The "buffered disk reads" should be well over 20 MB/s with any halfway modern harddrives.
If they arent check if DMA is turned on.
"using_dma" should be 1. If not you have an huge disk I/O performance penalty.
More in this guide, its slightly gentoo specific but quite good
http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use...ce_performance