- Joined
- Nov 12, 2002
- Location
- Rootstown, OH
PIO mode is a legacy method of transfering information to or from a disc drive. Hopefully, no one around here is using it as it will really cause you heightened CPU usage and slower transfer rates.
Thanks to one of MS's "features", you may be running in PIO mode and not even know it.
If windows detects that you are having trouble reading a disc it will automatically change your transfer mode back to PIO mode even if you have DMA selected. If it does this, you cannot change the mode back to DMA without going into device manager.
I had this problem with my plextor and to fix it I went into device manager, saw that I was in PIO mode, attempted to change it, rebooted, then got frustrated to see that it would not come out of PIO, so I just deleted the secondary IDE channel and restarted. When it came back on windows redetected and I was back into DMA mode like I belonged.
Now, going back to PIO mode to slow down disc access actually makes some sense because information is easier to retrieve when reading at slower rates... However being stuck there for good is awfully lousy. I may try to put up something on the frontpage to see if anyone is aware of another work around for this issue.
Thanks to one of MS's "features", you may be running in PIO mode and not even know it.
If windows detects that you are having trouble reading a disc it will automatically change your transfer mode back to PIO mode even if you have DMA selected. If it does this, you cannot change the mode back to DMA without going into device manager.
I had this problem with my plextor and to fix it I went into device manager, saw that I was in PIO mode, attempted to change it, rebooted, then got frustrated to see that it would not come out of PIO, so I just deleted the secondary IDE channel and restarted. When it came back on windows redetected and I was back into DMA mode like I belonged.
Now, going back to PIO mode to slow down disc access actually makes some sense because information is easier to retrieve when reading at slower rates... However being stuck there for good is awfully lousy. I may try to put up something on the frontpage to see if anyone is aware of another work around for this issue.