DMA won't enable

[Larry]

I just bought a Maxtor/133 120 Gb drive and I can't enable
DMA. I go to the device amanger and select 'DMA if
availble" but the transfer mode does not change to DMA. It
stays in PIO. My other drive is running Ultra DMA mode 2.
I've set the drives to master and slave and CS with no
change. I've tried the trick to set PIO then OK, and then
to DMA, OK but no help. I'm trying to capture video but
it's too slow without DMA enabled. I don't know if this is
an XP problem or something in the hardware. By the way..
It's a Dell 4550 1.8 G, P IV if that helps. Any
suggestions would be helpful.

Larry

 

[Peter]

Hi,

First check from your mobo BIOS to ensure DMA mode is
enabled. Also check what type of the flat ribbon cable
you are using; you should use 40 Pin 80 Conductor ribbon
cable otherwise you cannot use UDMA mode.
The new HD is the fastest drive, so you should connect it
as master and the slower HD as slave.

Remove the first letter m for email.

Good Luck,

Peter

 

[John Davis]

Larry,

Also, make sure you have the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard.
Another trick is to delete the ide channels in the device manager, reboot
and let
your sytem redetect and install them. I've had the same problem that you
describe
and this method has worked for me.

JDavis

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Have you looked at:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

"DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP"

in particular:

------------------------------------------------------------------
For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device
after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more
that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only
PIO mode on that device.


In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option
for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the
device.

Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than
six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one
UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).

If the mini-IDE driver for the device does not support stepping down
transfer modes, or if the device is running UDMA mode 0, Windows XP will
step down to PIO mode after encountering six or more CRC errors. In this
case, a system reboot should restore the original DMA mode settings.

All CRC and timeout errors are logged in the system event log. These types
of errors could be caused by improper mounting or improper cabling (for
example, 40-pin instead of 80-pin cable). Or such errors could indicate
imminent hardware failure, for example, in a hard drive or chipset.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------

I assume that a newish system like your Dell (845PE chipset) would have no
trouble with a 120 MB drive. (I believe that you'll only get Mode 5 rather
than the Mode 6, but you'd be hard pressed to detect the difference in
practice.)

You might also try the "Intel Application Accelerator", version 2.3, from
www.intel.com. (The newest version is for SATA RAID only.) Regardless of its
name, it's a set of replacement UDMA drivers. If they don't work for you,
they are uninstallable. AT the least, all that foolin' around would
rte-install the disks, whether you wanted to or not.

Good luck.

Bob Knowlden

Spam dodger may be in use. Replace nkbob with bobkn.