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Some newbie HDD Disk Questions

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  • Hard Drives
  • DMA
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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April 1, 2003 12:34:39 PM

OK, I have a i405L motherboard from Jetway which has the following:

Two PCI IDE controllers support PCI Bus Mastering,ATA PIO/DMA and the ULTRA DMA 33/66/100
functions that deliver the data transfer rate up to 100 MB/s.

I also have a HDD with the following claimed specs:

Mode 5 Ultra ATA 100.0 MB/s
Mode 4 Ultra ATA 66.6 MB/s
Mode 2 Ultra ATA 33.3 MB/s
Mode 4 PIO 16.6 MB/s
Mode 2 multi-word DMA 16.6 MB/s

Ok, now for the questions.

1) I am not seeing the sort of speeds mentioned above Any thoughts as to what I am doing wrong
2) What are all these different modes and can I set these anywhere or get my pc to use them ?
3) Any advice on what to look for/check to see if I am running at max speed. I guess I am not as the bencmarking software claims that my drives are running slowly

P.S I am using P2.5Mhz, 1.5GB Memory on Windows XP Pro.

Many thanks once again in advance.

More about : newbie hdd disk questions

April 1, 2003 1:22:10 PM

1. It's true that IDE HDD never achieve ATA100/133. But they are doing well on ATA33/66.
2. I taught you know the answer already. Those mode are the burst transfer rate for a HDD to be able to achieve theoridically.
3. In WinXP, make sure you check your DMA setting in Device Manager and enable DMA. Windows should auto detect your HDD and assign the correct mode for it. Oh, and you must use 80-pins ribbon cable (or rounded cable) for ATA100 HDD.
And finally, you can get all the answers by reading the HDD FAQ posted by LHGPooBaa.

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