Trying to allow DMA on optical drive, please help.

[acer0169]

Okay, I'll keep this short because no one likes an essay to read!

Basically I've recently built a media centre and I'm having a few issues with audio-playback. Some CDs play, rip etc without issues.. yet others are very choppy on every song and take aaaages to try and rip (eventually failing before any data is copied) - meaning the only alternative is to download a copy of each of the many albums that don't work via CD.

I've reinstalled motherboard drivers and updated the BIOS - still nothing.

After searching around online, nearly all threads relating to choppy audio CD playback comes from the transfer mode being something other than DMA - simple solution.. set DMA as the transfer mode right?

My problem is that I don't have them options!

The image below is of my office computer (what I'm on now) with device manager open, I've gone to the IDE controllers and gone to properties > advanced and you can see the options there for transfer mode (ULTRA DMA Mode). On my media centre however.. that advanced page has no devices or device properties listed - it's just blank.

Can anyone please help? I'm pretty sure having them options shown (and set correctly) would fix this.

ace

 

[GhislainG]

Are you using an IDE drive as used on your office system? If you use a SATA drive, then the issue is with the drive itself as it doesn't seem to read that well.

 

[acer0169]

The optical drive in my office machine (which has the advanced settings) is identical to the one in the media centre, both SATAII.

The drive in the media centre is also brand new, made by Samsung. It can't be that the drive doesn't read very well because 75% of discs whether they be albums, DVDs or data all run okay.. infact all data and video discs work fine.. it just some albums.

 

[GhislainG]

Both systems probably are not configured the same. Your office system is configured in IDE mode while your media centre system most likely is configured in AHCI or RAID mode.

Can you read the same albums on your office system? The fact that a drive reads 75% of the albums doesn't mean that it works perfectly.

 

[acer0169]

The media centre is set to IDE mode.

I can read the albums on my office system, though it did struggle with one of them.

 

[GhislainG]

If possible, could you try the office system drive in the media system to see if you still have the same issue? It's interesting that your media system is in IDE mode, but drives don't show up where you'd expect to see them.

 

[acer0169]

What? I never said the drives don't show up?

I'm trying to find out why my transfer mode settings aren't displaying?

 

[GhislainG]

Then what did you mean by "On my media centre however.. that advanced page has no devices or device properties listed - it's just blank."?

 

[acer0169]

Oh I get you. Under the settings there are no devices shown.. I thought you were thinking drives weren't showing in my computer or device manager or something.