Alternate ways of checkign setting PIO/DMA mode?

[Codesmith]

I just did a custom build for someone using a Gigabye GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard.

I am reusing to PATA drives, a hard drive and an optical, the board has a

GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_0, GSATA2_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD

The standard method of checking and setting DMA mode doesn't work. Nothing associated with this controller in the device manager has those settings.

DVD Fab Decrypter detected the optical drive was in PIO mode and fixed it for me.
HDTach revealed the HD was in PIO mode.

So I tried a tried that worked before when I had issues with PATA add on controllers, I changed the driver to the standard Dual Channel IDE controller.

That also helps when the burning software refuses to burn from an optical drive connected to an addon IDE controller

That worked ... but I am not happy with it. The driver tends to mysteriously revert to the original.

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What I would prefer is a utlity that could detect and change the PIO/DMA status of the drives under the original drivers.

DVD Fab could do it for the optical drive, but I am more concerned about the hard drive since SATA burners are ony $20 now.

 

[Codesmith]

No one has knows a method for checking/setting the IDE transfer mode outside of the Advanced Setting tab of the IDE channel properties in Device manager.

If that that tab is mission you are just out of luck?

No Registry tricks, no nifty Utility ... nothing .....

I am not exactly comfortable having to install the wrong drivers to get DMA to work.