Groking ATA-5, DMA, PIO and 160GB Hard Drives

[Roger]

I installed a Seagate 160GB IDE hard drive in my 5 year old Fujitus
Lifebook C2220. I sort of knew that ATA-5 has a limit of 128GB, and was
expecting the drive to be recognized as 128GB drive (that would have
been OK, as the Newegg price for the 160GB drive was $5 less than the
equivalent 120GB drive).

My problem is the drive is recognized as 160GB (or 149GiB) by W/XP, but
instead of using DMA access mode, it is using PIO and that makes the
drive noticeably slower than the 30GB drive I replaced. I tried
repartitioning the drive to 127GB and leaving the remainder unformatted,
but the problem remains.

After I use Device Manager to uninstall the primary IDE channel and the
hard drive, the next boot results in 6 timeout errors for atapi IdePort0
in the System Event log. I interpret this as XP trying to access the
drive with DMA 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, and then resorting to PIO mode.

My W/XP OS is current with SP3 and DriverMax does not suggest any newer
drivers for the IDE channels.

Assuming I want the speed DMA access offers over PIO mode, are there any
alternatives for me other than buying a real 120GB drive?

Roger

 

[Andy]

I installed a Seagate 160GB IDE hard drive in my 5 year old Fujitus
Lifebook C2220. I sort of knew that ATA-5 has a limit of 128GB, and was
expecting the drive to be recognized as 128GB drive (that would have
been OK, as the Newegg price for the 160GB drive was $5 less than the
equivalent 120GB drive).

My problem is the drive is recognized as 160GB (or 149GiB) by W/XP, but
instead of using DMA access mode, it is using PIO and that makes the
drive noticeably slower than the 30GB drive I replaced. I tried
repartitioning the drive to 127GB and leaving the remainder unformatted,
but the problem remains.

After I use Device Manager to uninstall the primary IDE channel and the
hard drive, the next boot results in 6 timeout errors for atapi IdePort0
in the System Event log. I interpret this as XP trying to access the
drive with DMA 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, and then resorting to PIO mode.

My W/XP OS is current with SP3 and DriverMax does not suggest any newer
drivers for the IDE channels.

Assuming I want the speed DMA access offers over PIO mode, are there any
alternatives for me other than buying a real 120GB drive?

Check the physical connection of the IDE interface. The size of the
drive or its partition has no effect on the transfer mode of the
interface.

 

[RobV]

I installed a Seagate 160GB IDE hard drive in my 5 year old Fujitus
Lifebook C2220. I sort of knew that ATA-5 has a limit of 128GB, and
was expecting the drive to be recognized as 128GB drive (that would
have been OK, as the Newegg price for the 160GB drive was $5 less
than the equivalent 120GB drive).

My problem is the drive is recognized as 160GB (or 149GiB) by W/XP,
but instead of using DMA access mode, it is using PIO and that makes
the drive noticeably slower than the 30GB drive I replaced. I tried
repartitioning the drive to 127GB and leaving the remainder
unformatted, but the problem remains.

After I use Device Manager to uninstall the primary IDE channel and
the hard drive, the next boot results in 6 timeout errors for atapi
IdePort0 in the System Event log. I interpret this as XP trying to
access the drive with DMA 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, and then resorting to
PIO mode.
My W/XP OS is current with SP3 and DriverMax does not suggest any
newer drivers for the IDE channels.

Assuming I want the speed DMA access offers over PIO mode, are there
any alternatives for me other than buying a real 120GB drive?

Roger

As mentioned, the size of the drive has nothing to do with data transfer
rates. At the bottom of the page at the link below, there are
instructions for enabling DMA mode through Device Manager. Also, this
page lists reasons why a drive may be forced into PIO mode by Windows
XP.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx