Why does my DVD ROM keep going into the PIO mode?

[DARRIN]

Every couple of days or so my DVD ROM goes from the Ultra DMA mode 2 into PIO mode which greatly reduces the read time for a movie. Whydoes it keep doing this? Is it the drive doing this or WinblowsXP?

 

[DieHardware]

UDMA enabled in BIOS? Which chipset MB? Have you tried the chipset makers IDE drivers?

 

[DARRIN]

Asus A7N8X mobo.
Nforce2 chipset.

UDMA enabled in BIOS?

- Should be, have not checked though.

It will be fine for several days then I notice it being real slow so I check in the device manager and it has gone back to the PIO mode. THe only way that I can get it back to UDMA mode is to delete my Secondary IDE in the device manager and reboot and let WindozeXP reinstall the Secondary IDE. Then all is well for a few more days.

Might just have to use this as a good excuse to go by a new Lite-On.

 

[DARRIN]

Originally posted by: DieHardware
Have you tried the chipset makers IDE drivers?

I have the A7N8X mobo drivers installed.

 

[Viper0329]

Do you have Intel Application Accelerator installed? I noticed it cleared up some things after I uninstalled mine.

 

[DARRIN]

Originally posted by: Viper0329
Do you have Intel Application Accelerator installed? I noticed it cleared up some things after I uninstalled mine.

Not sure what that is. I have an AMD system.

 

[stevewm]

2k and XP will bump down IDE speeds to PIO modes whenever more than 6 CRC errors occur. This is done to prevent your data from becoming corrupted. CRC errors are generally caused by a bad cable, bad connection, or bad drive.

To reset this error counter you must let Windows re-install the affected IDE channel.

Have a look at your Event Viewer for Errors. You can get to the event viewer by going to Control Panels, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, click on "System". Scroll through the list and look for Errors, if you find one double click on it to get more details. If you see any errors regarding your IDE devices definately try a different cable, if that doesn't solve it try your DVD-ROM in another system.

 

[DARRIN]

Originally posted by: stevewm
2k and XP will bump down IDE speeds to PIO modes whenever more than 6 CRC errors occur. This is done to prevent your data from becoming corrupted. CRC errors are generally caused by a bad cable, bad connection, or bad drive.

To reset this error counter you must let Windows re-install the affected IDE channel.

Have a look at your Event Viewer for Errors. You can get to the event viewer by going to Control Panels, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, click on "System". Scroll through the list and look for Errors, if you find one double click on it to get more details. If you see any errors regarding your IDE devices definately try a different cable, if that doesn't solve it try your DVD-ROM in another system.

Good info man. I see the errors. I was thinking of getting a Lite-On drive anyway. Might have to get one to see if that solves the problem.

 

[zephyrprime]

If you reset the error count, I bet it will just accumulate 6 more errors very quickly. Something is wrong with the drive or your controller or your cable. Or it could be an incompatibility.

 

[sharkeeper]

2k and XP will bump down IDE speeds to PIO modes whenever more than 6 CRC errors occur. This is done to prevent your data from becoming corrupted. CRC errors are generally caused by a bad cable, bad connection, or bad drive.

To reset this error counter you must let Windows re-install the affected IDE channel.

Have a look at your Event Viewer for Errors. You can get to the event viewer by going to Control Panels, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, click on "System". Scroll through the list and look for Errors, if you find one double click on it to get more details. If you see any errors regarding your IDE devices definately try a different cable, if that doesn't solve it try your DVD-ROM in another system

Thank goodness for SCSI. I've seen systems with IDE HDD do this and indeed, it was a bad hard disk. Typical Maxtor "quality" at work.

I've observed systems with hundreds of errors logged in the event viewer from trying rip a badly scratched audio disk, yet the drive was never forced to PIO mode. It must be a different flag which causes this. ATA disks running in PIO really slow the system down though. It seems more noticeable under XP than 9x.

-DAK-

 

[stevewm]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam

I've observed systems with hundreds of errors logged in the event viewer from trying rip a badly scratched audio disk, yet the drive was never forced to PIO mode. It must be a different flag which causes this. ATA disks running in PIO really slow the system down though. It seems more noticeable under XP than 9x.

-DAK-

IDE has error detection built into the interface itself, in the form of CRC checks. Errors appearing in EV from bad audio discs are not IDE CRC errors!

Personally I've had it happen 3 times to me since I've been using 2k/XP. And every time it was due to a bad cable. My system get dismantled/rebuilt alot. (I fix alot of people's systems in town, mine is the "testing platform" and is therefore never gets completely put back together.) All that flexing wears out cables quickly.

In PIO mode the CPU is involved in any transfer to and from a device. Even on modern systems it will still peg the CPU to 100% hence the awful slowness. DMA modes on the otherhand allow all data to be copied directly to system memory, therefore the CPU has to do very little work at all for transfers.

 

[Justorq]

So there is a chance that my new Maxtor HD might have this problem .... I've been trying to find out why it can't do more than 20MB/s transfer rate in sandra .... ill have to check this out ...

 

[Viper96720]

Originally posted by: Justorq
So there is a chance that my new Maxtor HD might have this problem .... I've been trying to find out why it can't do more than 20MB/s transfer rate in sandra .... ill have to check this out ...

No 20MB/s is fine for transfer rate. I score around 23MB/s last time I tried it.

 

[stevewm]

Originally posted by: Justorq
So there is a chance that my new Maxtor HD might have this problem .... I've been trying to find out why it can't do more than 20MB/s transfer rate in sandra .... ill have to check this out ...

Do not rely on Sandra as a disk benchmark, with its method of testing there are many things that can make the score appear artificially low.

Use ATTO or HDTach instead. Both of these programs perform a raw test, disregarding all filesystems and formatting. You can run them on a unformatted disk They will give a accurate reading of raw transfer speed.