DMA

[Mark Cain]

can anybody help by telling me where to check and if necessary enable DMA on
my hard drives and CD/DVD player. My hard drives are in a mirrored RAID
configuration. is DMA still applicable because I thought I new where to
look. was wondering if not available in RAID. what about CD/DVD, just normal
IDE

 

[Sharon F]

can anybody help by telling me where to check and if necessary enable DMA on
my hard drives and CD/DVD player. My hard drives are in a mirrored RAID
configuration. is DMA still applicable because I thought I new where to
look. was wondering if not available in RAID. what about CD/DVD, just normal
IDE

It depend on the motherboard type (intel, AMD, etc) and the drivers. I
believe Intel's Application Accelerator holds the menus for DMA. Being an
AMD user, I don't know what other settings are available or where.

On an AMD system, you'll find DMA info in the properties for the VIA bus
master or in the properties of each IDE channel. If the drop down menus
have become unavailable, it means the drives failed several I/O requests
and a "safe" setting was locked in. Removing the controller and restarting
will reset the menus.

Not sure where those settings will show up for a RAID controller. I use my
onboard Promise controller as standard IDE and can't find any settings
within Windows for DMA. If this can be configured, it would probably be in
the BIOS screens for the controller.