6. ENABLE DMA: DMA (Direct Memory Access) allows your IDE hard drive or CDRom to access memory directly, bypassing the CPU. This can free up CPU resources, especially when you are running many programmes simultaneously (multitasking), or using very CPU intensive programmes. You may also see this referred to as Ultra DMA, which is basically the same thing, but allowing for higher burst speeds. Firstly your drives must be DMA capable, most new drives will have this capability, secondly, all drives on a particular channel must be DMA capable too. In Windows 2000 DMA is enabled per channel, not per device: therefore if you have two devices on one IDE channel, both must be DMA capable - this is important as some CDRom drives are not DMA capable. To set DMA mode, click Administrative Tools, and then follow these steps to configure the DMA/PIO settings for a controller:
Click Administrative Tools, and then click Computer Management. Click System Tools, and then click Device Manager. Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Click the specific controller for which you want to configure DMA/PIO settings. Click the Advanced Settings tab. In the Transfer Mode box, click either PIO Only or DMA if available.