Hello

I found that ide driver take too much time for probing unnecessary drives. (drivers/ide-probe.c)
it probe from hda to hdl as you can see below and it takes about 3 ~ 4 seconds.
However common main board have only 2 ide controller so probing over hde is unnecessary.
My solution is redefine MAX_HWIF as 2 (originally 6) so I can reduce probing time down to 1 second.
Is there any other way which can control this such as using kernel parameter?

VP_IDE: VIA vt8235 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci00:11.1
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1ce0-0x1ce7, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1ce8-0x1cef, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
probing for hda: present=1, media=32, probetype=ATA
hda: MAXAN MFD-44-32, ATA DISK drive
probing for hdb: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdb: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdc: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdc: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdd: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdd: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hde: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hde: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdf: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdf: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdg: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdg: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdh: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdh: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdi: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdi: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdj: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdj: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdk: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdk: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
probing for hdl: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATA
probing for hdl: present=0, media=32, probetype=ATAPI
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: attached ide-disk driver.

Regard,
Heechul.