Dma6

[stan03]

What is this and how can I enable it on the two drives in my sig? or check if they are enabled?

[stan03]

bump

[Xaotic]

DMA-6, or more commonly known as UDMA-6 or ATA-133, is the direct memory access specification. I gather from your question that your 120GB HDD is mounted from the primary IDE, channel 1 or 2, headers and reads as UDMA-5 or ATA-100. To get the higher interface speed, move the drive to the RAID controller(if you have one) or add a PCI card. If you have the RAID headers, then move the HDD to one of those channels, if not then it's not worth the expense of a PCI card. Most of the time, the only improvements will be noticed in benchmarks. To check if it's enabled, check the modes in BIOS or, if you're using XP/2003 check the mode of the controller in device manager.

[stan03]

It says Ultra DMA Mode 2.... wow then i must be going really slow?

EDIT: the other is DMA Mode 5... in confused

[Xaotic]

It shouldn't be in UDMA-2. That's way too slow. What does the BIOS detecet the drive as? Do you have it on a 80 conductor cable? The 40 conductor cables will limit the drive mode. If you're on XP/2K3, check the event viewer for controller errors, too many can ramp down the UDMA mode to try to prevent errors. This can also happen if a device on the same chain is causing errors. If so, then try to separate the drive from the same chain as other devices and uninstall and reinstall the controller to regain the faster modes.

[stan03]

whoaaa, slow down a little:D

i think it was the sata drive thats dma2, how can i tell for sure?
when the computer boots up, it does recognize my ata 133 drive as a dma6(when the raid controller checks for drives). I don't know what the sata drive is though.... how can i check the even viewer? also neither drive is chained to on another.

[Xaotic]

The SATA drive's mode will be easiest to check through device mangler. Change the view to devices by connection and go to the SATA controller. Under advanced properites, it may show mode(not sure, I'm not running SATA, just SCSI and a few IDE). You can check the mode of the IDE drive under properties on its controller as well. Event Viewer is located in Computer Management and you'll need to check in the system tree. What you'd be looking for is a series of controller errors. System default is to ramp down one mode each time six CRC errors occur.

[stan03]

ok my sata drive is dma 5, the optical drives are dma 2 (it wasn't the ata drive, sorry), but i cannot my raid controller to see what dma my ata 133 is at...?

EDIT: what kind of erros am i looking for? i found a few system errors, but thats it.

[pik4chu]

under system it will say "data error" or "redundancy check error" or "file system error" those are the common CRC errors windows will report. If you have enough to throttle the speed of your drive it will be rather obvious.

[stan03]

thanks pik4chu, then how do i find out what dma my 133 is at and how do i set my sata drive to dma 6?

[pik4chu]

I dont know much about SATA but for the 133drive boot windows. and view info for the drive. It might tell you what windows says it is. Also some benchmarks progs I beleive tell you the info of the drive, pretty sure SiSoft Sandra does. that would be the best way to tell. And as statd above, make sure you got the right cables. you want "80 wire" ribbon cables.

[stan03]

windows says its udma5 ummm i have cooler master round cables with the grounding cable... are those ok?

and where can i find it in sandra?

[stan03]

ok found it sata is dma 5 ata 133 is dma 6... any ideas on how to fix the sata to run at dma6?

[K1ll1nT1m3]

I think your board supports UDMA5 on two channels and UDMA6 on two channels. You need to set the SATA drive to the controler that the UDMA6 device is on.

Edit. Set it to the same IDE channel that the UDMA6 device is on. You may have to mess with master and slave though.

[stan03]

.... huh? i need to put the sata drive on the controler that the udma6 device is on? i don't have another udma 6 device besides the ata 133 drive, and thats already on the raid contollers.

[K1ll1nT1m3]

In device mangler, is the ata133 drive using the primary IDE contoller? Just set it up so the SATA drive is mapped ( in BIOS probably ) to use the same IDE channel that the ATA133 drive is using. Just make one master and one slave.

[K1ll1nT1m3]

It sounds like the ATA133 drive is using the controller that supports UDMA6. But the SATA drive is using the contoller that supports UDMA5. If you go into device mangler and look at the ide controllers. you should be able to find out if the SATA and the PATA are using different contollers.

My board doesnt suppport UDMA6 so I am just guessing. I bet if you map ( in BIOS ) the SATA drive to use the contoller that supports UDMA6 it will then have a ATA133 transfer.