Why HDD goes to PIO mode???

[ast]

my computer was really slow and i found out that my 160 WD harddrive was in PIO mode. I reinstalled the drivers and restarted, then everything was ok (back to ultra DMA 5).
Now day later its back to PIO. i opened the computer, checked all connections etc, reintalled again..but it still goes back to PIO.

What could cause this problem?? hdd dying? bad cable?

I ran WesternDigital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics and it found some bad sectors, but there was fix button and it fixed the sectors.
drive is half year old and it's doing louder noise (when i bought it, it was silent)
I tought i can take it back for quarranty. But the diagnostics don't find bad sectors anymore and i don't think they will change it when i say: i THINK it's broken and it's making louder noise.

I also ran hd tach when drive was in dma mode:
HD tach test (http://mikk.juhe.ee/temp/wd160test.jpg)
is it ok?

[aftermath]

i belive its a fail safe win xp slows down the hdd access mode to try and improve stability.

if you have overclocked your pc and the fsb and pci bus are not ajustable independently try to lower the fsb a few mhz.

it cna be lowered just because of a crash as well. or mabey the dma driver was/is corrupt

edit: i should say iv had to fix a few problems with older amd t-bird machineds that like to get stuck in to pio mode and i couldnt find the driver for hours to fix it at first.

[ast]

ok i'll try to lower the fsb tomorrow and see what happens.

i uninstalled the ide channel drivers from device manager and after restart windows reinstalls them automatically. i coulnd find any other drivers from internet.

my pc also has problems restarting. it just wont boot up again after restart...have to press the button and then it goes again. i don't know if these problems are connected or not.

[aftermath]

the drivers were necessary on my board because it had a via south-bridge which needed udma drivers i couldnt find them on the baords producers website.


whats your board? many boards now lock the pci bus.

has the pc often locked up?

[dark_15]

:welcome: to the forums ast!

Take a look at this article; it may help solve your problems...

Make PIO Go! (http://www.overclockers.com/articles1161/)

[ast]

Thanks for your replies
I have abit KD7 motherboard (without raid)

dark_15 isn't it a bit different with HDD ? i have never done anything in regedit...maybe i **** something up :rolleyes:

aftermath my ps doesn't lock up. When i need to restart and click restart from windows then it shuts down but wont boot again...and then i have to press restart on case

i'm in a hurry now...but i'll come back later and see what can be done

[theMonster]

FYI, I had a couple of boards that kept doing this to me and it HAD to be a problem with the crappy VIA chipset because both the ECS and the BioStar boards did the same thing, replaced ONLY the board with a Nforce2 board and viola I've never had the drive drop back to PIO mode again.

[juliendogg]

hdd or dvd or cd will all do the same thing. windows xp will slow them down to PIO from DMA after a certain amount of read errors. CRC errors specifically. This can happen after playing a damaged cd, or a dirty cd. There's your usual windows XP "user friendliness". grumble grumble grumble. Check out that article Dark posted, good read.

J.

[ast]

abit kd7 is good motherboard but
some time ago the northbridge cooler started to die down and i changed it with zalman passive cooling. is it possible that something went wrong and now theres smth with motherboard?
sad if thats the problem

that kind of thing can't be tested other than changeing the motherboard...and i don't have anything to change it with.

i'll try the regedit version first (hope i won't screw it up)

[Dukeman]

I had the same problem with a Soyo board w/VIA chipset and CPU OC'd. Turned out to be my ATA cable was poor quality. Eventhough I can't lock the PCI bus speed a good cable allows my system to run stable and keeps the PIO issue from coming back.

Like all things in an OC'd system, it will expose crappy ATA cables too. Try replacing your cable and then see if you can reload your drivers and set the drive back to UDMA mode.

[ast]

Yes i tried to change the cable, but it still went back to PIO

[theMonster]

Try replacing your chipset if getting into UDMA is imprtant to you. I personally couldn't tell a big difference in speed, I was just annoyed that it wasn't working like it was supposed to. I tried everything from a different drive, different cable, registry hacks to a fresh install of the OS. It WAS the chipset. Yes, I'm a VIA hater for several reasons other than this, but SIS is pretty high on my poop-list as well.

[el]

yeah I never new why I sometimes would end up in PIO mode. I'll run those hacks and hopefully my problems are gone.

[el]

SON OF A BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT TTTTTTTTTTTCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC||||||||||||||| ||||-----------------|||||||||||||||||||||

I am running multiword reg DMA or half speed!

[ast]

i finally got a harddrive from friend...just to test and see what happens.
anyway it works perfictly and i can hardly hear it (my own drive is making really loud noise)

so i gave my hdd to a friend to see how it acts in different computer.
i try to take it back for quarranty. i hope they believe me because the tests show that it's working properly.

My computer isn't still booting properly but if i get new hdd and everything else works then i can live with it.

[aftermath]

its quite posible that the drive is on the way out and makes so many read errors that that is the problem, and why wiundows is slowing down your accses method.
test it with its manufactorers test tool too see how it is.

boot problems can be because of failing capaciters do a visual inspection of the board and the psu if you can. you are looking for bulges or leaks of goop.

[ast]

aftermath as you can see from my first post i ran WD data lifegueard tool..and after it fixed the bad sectors it doesn't find anything else wrong.
What other hdd testing programs i can use to find some errors?

My friend translated what you just said to me. my english isn't that good and i didn't understand anything :P when i get to home i'll check the motherboard again. but last time i didn't notice anything wrong.

[redduc900]

Instead of just uninstalling the drivers for the Controller in question, I'd probably try uninstalling the Controller itself. If for example the HDD in question is on the Primary IDE Controller...in Device Manager, expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, right click "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Uninstall". Reboot and recheck to see if the HDD is indeed in UDMA mode.

[Cheator]

From my experience, it happens when your cable is bad, your hard drive isn't made well (IE By maxtor :)), or your chipset is dumb.

I had an ASUS lappy and holy lord, PIO seemed to be stock. I couldn;t get it out of that mode. Looked up the chipset and there was a fix for my specific model. Put in that driver and it worked fine :)

[el]

yeah my regedit worked too. thanks to IMOGs article.