Ultra ATA and Windows 2000

[Guest]

I was wondering if anyone on this forum has experienced this problem. I have a new Dell Dimension 4100 that has a Western Digital HD capable of ATA 100 and the Intel 815 (I believe) chipset. Anyway it is the chipset that supports the Ultra ATA mode for data transfers.

I have tried to install the Intel Ultra ATA drivers (and the chipset utility) several times, but the driver does not install correctly and the Ultra ATA mode is never enabled.

Is there something special I have to do with Win2K to make this work? Dell tech support is recommending I reinstall my op system. They might as well be saying 'go away'. I will reinstall if that is what it takes though.

 

[Guest]

>>I have a new Dell Dimension 4100 that has a Western Digital HD capable of ATA 100 and the Intel 815 (I believe)chipset<<

Don't guess.. find out for sure what mb it is.

>>Anyway it is the chipset that supports the Ultra ATA mode for data transfers.<<

Dell's Intel mbs have been supporting Ultra ATA standard for years. Do you mean Ultra ATA 100? Only the 815E supports ATA 100 in that case. The original 815 does not.

>>I have tried to install the Intel Ultra ATA drivers (and the chipset utility) several times, but the driver does not install correctly and the Ultra ATA mode is never enabled.<<

I believe the driver you are talking about is for Win98 and Win98SE.

>>Is there something special I have to do with Win2K to make this work? Dell tech support is recommending I reinstall my op system. They might as well be saying 'go away'. I will reinstall if that is what it takes though.<<

If the bios of the board recognizes it as an ATA 100 or UDMA mode 5 drive, I'd say that's all you need to go into the device manager and set the drive to automatically detect DMA.




***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Guest]

So I don't need to install the Intel ATA drivers? They state they are for Win98 and Win2K.

Does Win2K have native support for ATA66 or ATA100?

If Win2K natively enables DMA, does the firmware take care of the ATA66, or ATA100, whatever the case may be?

I have set my 'IDE Primary Controller' to utilize DMA, but it only will run in PIO mode.

 

[Guest]

>>So I don't need to install the Intel ATA drivers? They state they are for Win98 and Win2K<<

No it is possible you still need to install an updated driver not for a matter of supporting ATA 66 or ATA100 per sae, but that Win2k may need a driver update for the IO controller hub to operate properlly.

Are you referring to this particular driver?

"82801AA ICH IDE-Storage Driver for Windows Millennium, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000. Version 6.02.005, Build 5723"

If so, this is for the older 815 that does not support ATA100. The driver will/should not work on the 815e. If this is the driver you are using then the fact that it won't install if you are getting an error message that you do not have proper hardware installed (something to that effect), does suggest you do have the 815e. If this is not the driver you are refering to, please point me in the direction of that driver for more help there.

>>Does Win2K have native support for ATA66 or ATA100?<<

Win2k has support for IDE bus mastering (DMA), which is what is need by the windows OS to run IDE drives in DMA.

>>If Win2K natively enables DMA, does the firmware take care of the ATA66, or ATA100, whatever the case may be?<<

If you set automatically set DMA if detected (I believe that is the option) under the drives properties in device manager and Win2k does set it in DMA mode, The mb, the hd controller logic (circuit board), and the OS work in tangent for DMA transfers. And yes the IO controller hub and controller board on the drive are responsible for determining transfer modes.

"I have set my 'IDE Primary Controller' to utilize DMA, but it only will run in PIO mode."

That will never allow you to use DMA mode. Probably where a lot of the problem is. Please explain your steps in setting the "IDE primary controller" to utilize DMA. You might even call DELL back and explain to them that you can not get the mb to detect the drive as UDMA. Make sure you are using a 80pin IDE cable (there should be one that came with the board).



***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Guest]

Firstly let me say that your response is starting to clear what has been muddy waters for the past couple of weeks. I very much appreciate that. Let me be a bit more detailed about the drivers I have installed and the hardware setup that I have. Surely if I can learn more about this then I can avoid rebuilding my OS. From your response it appears rebuilding might not solve the problem anyway.

1) I have installed the following drivers in this order. There are actually newer versions of these off the Intel website, but these are the currently 'supported' ones from Dell.

Intel 800 Series Chipset INF Update Utility version A04 (Win2K, Win95, Win98, Win98 2nd edition)
Intel Ultra ATA Storage Driver version A05 (Win2K, WinNT 4.0 SP4, WinNT 4.0 SP5) -- build 6.01.006

The Chipset Update Utility installs successfully.

The Ultra ATA driver installs w/o errors. However, a readme.txt file is installed that contains a steps on how to verify the driver has been properly installed. This is how I know the Ultra ATA driver is not installing properly. Additionally there is an 'Intel Ultra ATA companion' utility program that is installed, but won't run complaining 'The Intel Ultra ATA Storage Driver was not detected!'.

Here is my hardward configuration:
a) Opened the Windows 2000 Device Manager dialog.
---
b) I expand the 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers' node. Listed are:

i) Intel(R) 82801BA Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 244B
ii) Primary IDE Channel
iii) Secondary IDE Channel
---
c) Choosing properties on the Ultra ATA node (i), then the 'Driver' tab, then 'Driver Details...' reveals:
c:\WINNT\System32\DRIVERS\atapi.sys
c:\WINNT\System32\DRIVERS\pciide.sys
c:\WINNT\System32\DRIVERS\pciidex.sys

1) The readme.txt states I should see a 'INTELATA.SYS' file installed. I don't.
---
d) Choosing properties on the Primary IDE Channel node, then 'Advanced Settings' reveals:

Device 0
Device Type Auto Detection <-- not selectable
Transfer Mode DMA if available <-- before I changed this it was set to PIO only
Current Transfer Mode PIO Mode <-- this is bad! should be Ultra DMA!

Device 1
Device Type Auto Detection <-- not selectable
Transfer Mode DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode Ultra DMA Mode <-- this is in the proper mode!

Device 1 is in Ultra DMA Mode! However, I need to get Device 0 in this mode! Device 1 is an old 3.4 Gb drive that I just installed to backup my files before I rebuilt my operating system. When I looked it just happened to be in the Ultra DMA mode.
---
What types of drives are these? Windows 2000 Device Manager reports them as:
Device 0 WDC WD400BB-75AUA1
Device 1 SAMSUNG VG33402A (3.4 GB) <-- this is the old

I have been to the Western Digital website and looked up the specs. The drive can be set in several modes, but the highest performance mode is Ultra DMA Mode 5.

So based on my current configuration and knowing exactly what drivers I have installed, can you tell me what the problem is? Sorry for being so vague before. Hopefully this information is enough to tell what I need to do.

Again I very MUCH appreciate any help you can provide. I have been fighting this for a couple of weeks now and have invested hours and hours.

Thanks,
John

 

[Guest]

Deal with this on a priority level.

1) right hardware.. 80pin cable, drive, mb, etc that support the ATA 100. (I think you have all of this except you haven't indicated whether you are using an 80pin cable rather than a standard 40pin ide cable) for the WD.

2) The bios recognizes the drive properlly as a UDMA drive. (You indicated you had tried to set the drive manually to UDMA mode but could only get it to PIO. I'm thinking you might of meant that you did this in the OS. You must check and make sure the "bios" of the mb is doing this as well. That comes before anything that must be done in the OS.

3) Proper support and setup in the OS.

_____________________________________________

(Intel(R) 82801BA Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 244B)
I'd say this is a good sign that Bus mastering is supported, but still the bios issue if there is one must be resolved first

(1) The readme.txt states I should see a 'INTELATA.SYS' file installed. I don't)

Since this is a universal installer for all 800 series, which could mean 810, 815, 820, 840, and even 850 chipsets. This might not be the case for the 815E chipset. I have only a vague clue really since I have no access to DELL drivers or their support pages. Either way, the bios issue if there is one must be resolved first. If the bios of the mb doesn't recognize the drive as UDMA, priority 2 hasn't been finished.

Transfer Mode DMA if available is the setting I would prefer. Though as you noticed with the older Samsung for most hard drives when the mb sets it as DMA and the default auto detection is set, Win2k will as well. The inability for you to select DMA for the Western Digital in the OS points to the 80pin cable and motherboard bios first, then any drivers that may need to be installed.

The western digital drive is their new ATA100 drive I believe and capable of UDMA mode 5 as you indicated and a very nice performing drive. The samsung is probably a UDMA mode 2 or 3 capable drive (I would look up the specs, but it's not an issue).



***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Guest]

just something I noticed in Chord's response as I was skimming through this thread. There is no such thing as an 80pin IDE cable. The proper cable for running IDE at ATA66 or ATA100 is a 40pin 80 conductor IDE cable. The physical connector is no different between the cables, but the 80 conductor cable itself has 80 wires instead of 40, half of which are ground wires that reduce "noise" and allow for the faster speeds while maintaining signal integrity.

With regards to the initial question of Win2k and ATA100 support, I don't believe win2k supports ATA100 as of this time. You will have to wait for SP2 to be released for that. This shouldnt make any difference considering that any IDE hard drive you could possibly buy right now will gain absolutely no performance gain from use of the ATA100 spec over the ATA66 spec. A drive you might buy 4 or 6 months from now might be a whole different story but at this point just make sure that under your Device manager\IDE Controllers\Advanced Settings that your Transfer mode is set to DMA if Available. Assuming you have everything else setup properly (BIOS etc.) then that should be all you need to do.

 

[Guest]

>>just something I noticed in Chord's response as I was skimming through this thread. There is no such thing as an 80pin IDE cable. The proper cable for running IDE at ATA66 or ATA100 is a 40pin 80 conductor IDE cable. The physical connector is no different between the cables, but the 80 conductor cable itself has 80 wires instead of 40, half of which are ground wires that reduce "noise" and allow for the faster speeds while maintaining signal integrity.<<

Correct..

>>With regards to the initial question of Win2k and ATA100 support, I don't believe win2k supports ATA100 as of this time. You will have to wait for SP2 to be released for that. <<

Yeap. But if you'll notice he is unable to get DMA if Available or DMA enabled at all. So a I considered there must be something else preventing this thus the ATA100 or ATA 66 problem is not even a concern yet.. but I just read this (address below) after going and taking a look in Microsoft's knowledge base, which explains after adding the fix for Win2k, Win2k may inappropriately display the mode as PIO when in fact it is actually in DMA. This of course, doesn't explain if the fix has been installed properly and is causing this why he doesn't see the intelata.sys or intelide.sys as Microsoft puts it. So there I'm stumped and I don't know if it's operating in DMA wrongly displayed as PIO (in which case you could ignore it) or a problem with the drive not being recognized in UDMA mode by the bios.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/2/33.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=ata 100&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000




***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Zenthar]

Does anyone know where I can find this "fix"?
I hope they will get proper ATA-100 support soon enough...

 

[Guest]

Your replies have been extremely helpful and everything is starting to make sense. I have fixed the problem. There are still some lingering questions, but answering them now is an academic exercise because my data xfer rates have now increased substantially (I have gone from ~3.7 Mb/s to ~50 Mb/s. My goal was to edit video coming from my digital video camera, and I am off and running thanks to your expert advice.

I was reviewing your checklist for enabling DMA xfers. I was questioning whether I had the 80 conductor cable. Although I was not able to tell anything definitively from the markings on the cable, I concluded that I must have it as the second drive I installed was operating in Ultra ATA mode.

I then had the thought that my HD supports ATA Mode 5, but what if it wasn't configured to run at this mode? This brought me to the Western Digital site where lo and behold, I found and downloaded a utility that sets the mode of the drive. However, it stated the factory default was ATA 100 (Mode 5). When I ran the utility I discovered that the drive had been indeed set to Mode 5. Just as a test, I configured the drive to Mode 4 (ATA 66). When the computer rebooted, the Device Manager indicated the drive was operating in Ultra ATA mode! Performing a video capture confirmed the data xfer rate had been substantially improved.

So I am working, and I thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I was ready to reinstall my op system when I remembered about this website and decided to pursue this as a last ditch effort. Fortunately I didn't have to reinstall Win 2K, and it wouldn't have solved the problem anyway!

So here are some thoughts:

1) I must have the standard 815 chipset (not 815E) as once the drive was configured for ATA 66 everything started working.
2) I now wonder why the driver I was trying to install didn't ever install properly?

Thanks again,
John