Hard drives running in PIO mode

[Chaotix]

For some reason, my HD's or my CD drives won't run in any form of UDMA. I'm runnin a 1.6A P4 @ 2.1 on an MSI 845 Ultra ARU mainboard. On the primary channel, I have a 40 gig 7200 RPM IBM 60GXP as master and a 5400 RPM 60gig WD as slave. On the secondary channel I have a 12x Teac burner as master (burns aren't working tho, perhaps because of the DMA problems?) and a 48x Toshiba CD-ROM as slave. I've installed Intel .inf updates, Intel Application Aceelerator to no avail. When I checked Device Manger and the properties for IDE channels, it said they were set to DMA if available but they were all runnin in PIO mode. It was using the MS drivers that came w/ XP Pro, so I clicked Update Drivers and it found newer Intel ones I had installed. After that though, in the IDE channel properties it lost the advanced tab that told me if they were running in PIO or UDMA, but if I check my resources I see only 2 DMA channels are being used. Channel 2 for the floppy disk controller and channel 4 for DMA controller. I would really appreciate it if one of you hardware guru's could help me out cuz my should be blazin comp is really slow.

 

[Lithium381]

hrm, well check your BIOS to see if there is an option in there, i'm not familiar with that...in my bios, it's set to auto.....it boots up in PIO 4..which should be pretty fast(fastest anyways) and it seems to do okay.....try unchecking DMA for your burner. i know my dvd doesn't like to run on DMA....does fine without it though

 

[Chaotix]

BIOS was one of the first things I checked and it looks like its setup to use UDMA. And after moving to the Intel drivers I can't find anywhere in Windows where I can specify to use DMA or not. When I first checked everything it said my 2 HD's and CD-ROM were running in PIO, and my burner was in UDMA 2. After going to Intel drivers, then back to MS drivers, it said everything was running in PIO. Unlike Win9x, in XP there isn't just a box to check so that it runs in UDMA (not that I can find at least). I've got Monday and Tuesday off so maybe I'll just reformat and install Win2k.

 

[Chaotix]

Anyone have anything for me to try? I might reformat, but I'd rather not have to.

 

[WarCon]

The Intel Appplication Accelerator is basically just a fancy packaging on Bus Master Drivers. If you install it, it decides if a drive is capable of going DMA or not. You can open up the program (installs an application in programs) and see what mode it is running in.

I am going to assume your using the ATA66/100 cable for your hard drives and a regular IDE cable for your CDRom's.

The Intel .infs you mentioned are the chipset drivers right?

Only thing I can offer is to reinstall the IAA 2.0 and run it and see exactly what mode it picked for you. In most bus master drivers you can choose to switch to a different mode, but I didn't see one in the IAA. I switched back to the latest non IAA driver myself and have the advanced tab back. When you uninstall the IAA's, it automatically turns DMA off (that is one of its listed bugs) so you need to turn it back on manually if you don't run IAA.

 

[Chaotix]

Yea I think the infs were for the chipset. They just popped up on the MSI CD which seems to autodetect what drivers you need to install.

I checked the IAA program and it says my HD's are running in UDMA5 and CD-ROM's are doing UDMA 2. They still seem pretty slow though and checking my DMA's in Device Manager, it shows only the 2 I previously mentioned being used. I'm thinking something should be showing up there for the HD's.

 

[ObiDon]

Try going into the device manager and removing the hard drive controller. Not just the primary/secondary channels...the whole controller itself Then, reboot and relax while XP does it's thing. Hopefully, you'll get your DMA back after it's all done.

 

[WarCon]

Have you HDTach'ed them or Sisoft Sandra drive benchmark. That will give you an indication if they are the problem.

If you having a driver conflict, or software conflict of some sort then it may appear like your system is dragging behind. Is this the same install as your last system? (Meaning did you just migrate your hard disk directly over without reloading?) If thats the case, it might just be some kind of conflict and probably isn't worth fighting. I would reload fresh and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[morkinva]

Arent you talking apples and oranges here? Piomode is the burst speed your ide channel is capable of, like 16MB/s or something like that. So from piomode on up thru UDMA 4, that represents the maximium sustainable transfer rate of the drive on that channel.

I have a cd-rw that is running in piomode 4, but still can select or deselect 'enable DMA'

 

[Chaotix]

Hmm, I benchmarked my first partition with Sandra and got an 18826, which isn't as good as Sandra says it should be, but I guess its not too bad. I think the score is a little low too because its the first partition. XP is still really slow booting, so I've still got some more stuff to look at.

To answer Warcon's question: I have 3 partitions, one for windows, one for games and apps on the 40gig IBM, and one partition on the 60gig WD for everything else. I just deleted and recreated my windows partition a couple weeks ago after I installed my new system, but the other 2 haven't been reformatted in months. Maybe I'll back everything up and clean those up one at a time and see if that helps.

Thanks for your help guys.

 

[optimistic]

nm

 

[daveqb]

heck this out
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/IDE-DMA.asp