DMA mode problem

T

toxicity

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I currently have a Western Digital 100Gb 8mb buffer. I have DMA mode enabled but problem is that this hdd is only on Ultra dma mode 2. I do believe that it is capable of higher. What could be the problem, how can I fix it if possible.

This hdd is partitioned 3 way. Im running an P4 1.7Ghz with 512 SDram.

thx in advance
 
Make sure that your board supports it and that you are using a cable capable of that. Good luck.
 
Originally posted by dreamliner77
Make sure that it is not on the cable with an optical drive


That must be it i guess. But I have not been able to get my Samsung hard drive to work as a slave, so i put it onto the secondary ide as a master with my dvd. on my primary i have my WD hdd and a cdrw.
 
there are 2 different ide cables. one is 40-conductor (up to ata33)and the newer 80-conductor cables (up to ata133). the visible difference is the grooves along the 40-conductor cable are large and fewer than the 80-conductor with has twice as many smaller grooves running along the length. for your setup, you want both channels using 80-conductor cables.
 
Originally posted by toxicity
That must be it i guess. But I have not been able to get my Samsung hard drive to work as a slave, so i put it onto the secondary ide as a master with my dvd. on my primary i have my WD hdd and a cdrw.


As stated before, your not supposed to put a hard drive and an optical on the same IDE channel, the hard drive will only be as fast as the optical drive. Hence; the optical drive is UDMA mode 2 therefore, your hard drive will be UDMA mode 2.
 
Originally posted by TKC
As stated before, your not supposed to put a hard drive and an optical on the same IDE channel, the hard drive will only be as fast as the optical drive. Hence; the optical drive is UDMA mode 2 therefore, your hard drive will be UDMA mode 2.
not true. the harddrive will still be udma 5 or 6 or whatever. i have a laptop with both the hd and dvdrom on the same channel and the dvdrom is mode 2 and hd is mode 5.

having the optical drive share a channel with the harddrive does undoubtably slows down the hd somewhat, though. the controller has to switch modes. ideally you want drives sharing the same channel to have the same ata speed to prevent this.
 
So if I put my WD on the same channel as my dvd rom, i should expect a performance increase, assuming my dvd runs at a higher dma?
Or would it be best to stick both hdd on the same channel?
 
yeah, harddrives should only share channels with other hd's... and same goes with optical drives. this will give you the best performance.
 
heh, this takes me back to square one on y i configured my hdd this way. My comp wont boot if my samsung is on primary slave, argh.
 
is it a recent samsung? i got a sv1204h a couple months ago and it came with a small note that showed the correct jumper positions... they differed from the ones in the manual. let me look for it..

[edit] haha, barely found it.

it's apparently for all SpinPoint hd's. if yours is over 32gb, and you want it as a slave, then you need 2 jumpers, both lined up along the top of the pins.

diagram (no jumpers):

o o o o
o o o o

diagram (jumpers installed for >32gb, slave):

== ==
o o o o
 
Alright, thx. I'll try it out when i get home. But shouldnt the DMA mode be affected if each harddrive is on a seperate 80 conductor controller?
 
Originally posted by taurus
not true. the harddrive will still be udma 5 or 6 or whatever. i have a laptop with both the hd and dvdrom on the same channel and the dvdrom is mode 2 and hd is mode 5.
I've never seen a controller that can do that. But then I haven't tested on all controllers... How common is this? Maybe just some Laptops?

I still say HDD and CD on different cables. At least for testing if that is the problem. Skip the optical drives all together for a while.
 
Originally posted by Zedric
I've never seen a controller that can do that. But then I haven't tested on all controllers... How common is this? Maybe just some Laptops?

I still say HDD and CD on different cables. At least for testing if that is the problem. Skip the optical drives all together for a while.
you mean like this?:

dma_mode.txt


this is my secondary channel. device 0 is my dvdrom running at ata66 (mode 4). it'd be the same thing if it was a mode 5 or mode 6 harddrive. both devices on a channel don't have to run at the same speed.

agreed, though... it's better if harddrives and optical drives don't share channels with each other.
 

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