Cant Get Special Ed. Hard Drive To Stop Running In Pio Mode!

[ThePunkerGuy]

Ok, here is the problem. My friend's WD Special Edition 80gig will not run in DMA Mode!! He has an Abit SA6R motherboard (intel.. i know..). I have tried everything in the Bios.. the drive is on the master chanel at the end of an ATA100 cable and set to Cable Select mode. In the bios i have tried setting the drive to Auto Detect, and Manual - LBA mode. But no matter what i do when i go into win2000 or xp (i dual boot). And go to the device manager and primary IDE chanel it will not go to DMA Mode! I have the option for "DMA If Avalible" chosen but it is still running in PIO Mode! I have the most current bios for the motherboard. I have tried everything and i cant get it out of PIO mode!! HELP!
- Mike

 

[Electronic Punk]

Are you using a UDMA66 compatible cable ?

 

[ThePunkerGuy]

Yes, i am using an ata100 cable that came with the motherboard
- Mike

 

[Electronic Punk]

Is it detecting in PIO mode in windows only, or is it also PIO on that table just before XP starts to load...

I have ahad a abad experience with HDDs which ended up actually being a HDD fault, tried everything to get out of PIO mode - now got a nice fast one

 

[dave holbon]

Personally I’d never use the cable select (CS) method of connecting IDE hard drives even though some modern drives are supplied with this configuration as the default. This standard never caught on as it can produce some interesting problems especially with XP, which allocates drive letters at installation time. This can cause problems if you have or have had two hard drives on the same 80-core cable (which is actually a 40 core cable with digital grounds between each signal wire where Pin #28 (ground) is detected as proof that an eighty core cable is in use). This also means that the BIOS must also be compatible with this standard. Surprisingly some modern BIOS’s don’t check that this is the case. Always set your BIOS to re-detect your drives with every re-boot.

Go here for more info on this subject: -

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_CS.htm

Set the drive to master and don't use the CS method.

Hope this helps;

 

[Nick M]

CS! I hate cable select.

You don't understand how many problems that had given me, up untill the time I realized it is better to set it manually, on slave and master yourself.

1. This causes windows conflicts and errors, especially if you have an iDE able with a optical drive and a HDD on it.

2. Sometimes BIOS does not detect hard drives, if they are a differnet operating speed aside from each other.

You should try to format the drive and then see if it will run.