IDE driver updates

  • Thread starter Thread starter Garry Sharp
  • Start date Start date
Garry Sharp

Garry Sharp

Lost Cause
Help would be appreciated....

My system is home built (by an idiot - me), AMD 2600+ on an ABIT KV7 mobo, 512MB, running XP home. Default BIOS drivers. Toshiba Deskstar 7200 / 120 gig HD (just the one at the moment).

All is fine and dandy, except I can't get the IDE controller out of PIO mode. It's set to "DMA if available", and when I check the BIOS setting on boot, DMA is there and set to auto. Do I need to update the IDE drivers, and if so how - can't find them on the Update Windows website?

My Cubase book stresses the importance of DMA, and as it I find that to get glitch free playback from my Audiophile I have to have very high buffer settings.

Thanks again in advance.

Garry
 
Ah...excellent question. It's a bright yellow round one. Guess I'll have to check - any way of doing that without opening it up?
 
Thanks Daffy. Had a look and came out in a cold sweat. I'm sure you're right though, I'm just too thick to understand all that nVidia stuff. Luckily it's bed time here so I'll leave it till tomorrow (just been comping a vox track with the singer looking over my shoulder :eek: that's enough for anybody's evening)

Thanks again.
 
Actually your board is a VIA KT600 so the latest 4 in 1 drivers will work fine. They should turn on the DMA automatically.
 
Thanks again Daffy - installed the drivers, immediately noticed boot up seemed (subjectively) about 20% quicker. It definitely improved the system all round, although primary IDE is still showing PIO (secondary is Ultra DMA 2) and I haven't been able to reduce the buffer sizes on the 2496.

Nevertheless an improvement, and thanks again.

Garry (left the penguins out this time :))
 
What all do you have connected to the two IDE channels?
You need to look at the documentation for your mother board and identify which connector is Primary and which is Secondary. The Toshiba drive should most certainly support DMA transfer rates, and (in your set up) I would have it on the Primary (for OS and proggies). Whatever CD drive you use may not support DMA (which I would have on the Secondary). Yet with most BIOS's you can specify which channel has the boot drive, so this would not be much of an issue.
I would also have to think that, the round cables you have should be just fine. At least all the round IDE cables I've seen are in fact 80 conductor. Yet again, I say "all I've seen", there could be exceptions.

NOTE: An IDE channel will only have a transfer rate as fast as the slowest device connected to it is.
For example ... If you have an older CD ROM/RW or such connected on the same channel as a brand spankin new 7200 RPM ATA 133 drive .... that CD ROM/RW is going to be the dictating factor in speed of the channel, thus negating the high transfer rate the hard drive is capable of. Likewise with a new fast CD ROM/RW and an old hard drive (granted, it would prolly have to be quite an old hard drive).

In conclusion, I would guess your CD drive doesn't support DMA transfer, and it is connected to the Primary channel. Hence the PIO only on that channel. Or there is some bad firmware on that Toshiba drive.

-Ken
 
crankz1 states:
NOTE: An IDE channel will only have a transfer rate as fast as the slowest device connected to it is.

This is misinformation.

Yes, a CD-R can interfere with HDD reads and writes, but only if they're both writing to or reading from the bus at the same time. Otherwise, each will work just fine at their designed speeds.
 
crankz and curry - thank you for those posts. The primary has the HDD and a new Philips CD/DVD reader on it, the secondary has a CD writer only. (The secondary is clearly not a problem)
 
crankz - thanks again man, you're a diamond. Will follow your advice over the weekend.

G
 
According to Microsoft, you may not get DMA is suitable drivers were not found during XP install.
Installing the driver may enable DMA, if not, try the following "toggle trick".

In the controllers properties for the particular drive, change "DMA if available" to PIO. Apply and reboot.
Now change back to DMA if available. Apply and reboot.
Should now (hopefully) actually be using DMA.

It's quite true that a drive will not slow down faster ones on the same channel while not being accesssed. Used to, not anymore.
Windows and the hardware will use the best speed and mode available.
Most bios now display something like "80 wire conductor not found" during boot if you have a 40 wire on a drive capable of better than UDMA33. The drive will then be limited to 33.

If XP sees too many DMA transfer errors, it will switch back to PIO and you cannot get DMA back unless you swap the drive to another channel.
XP has a blacklist of drives known to be bad with DMA and will not enable it on them (I found this hard to believe but have read it in an MS knowledge article).
 
Last edited:
Jim - good post, thank you, cool plan, didn't work (I spent my teenage years in Wales by the way). Maybe I'm personally blacklisted by Microsoft, never mind my devices. Now that we all have broadband that's on all the time they're probably reading our magnetic fields.

Probably an irrelevant details but there was not an "apply" box after the change, just an OK - perhaps I missed something.

Anyway I'll also have a go at crank's plan when I can face up to unplugging all those cables. I notice that everytime I sneeze Norton demands a re-registration, which it says I've done too many times now - even did it after I installed a wireless USB device - all this stuff gets kind of cumulative, don't you think?

Thanks again for your time.

Garry
 
Yeh, correct - no "apply". OK does the same.

Sorry it didn't work, maybe switching some drives onto another channel will force XP to renable the DMA - but watch for it switching back later! I have a machine with a Creative CD burner that gets PIO'd by XP - I can't get it to stay on DMA at all - it did stay in DMA under 98 and 2000!
 
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