Cant put my hard drive in DMA Mode :(

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I'm guessing this is why my computer is taking so long to boot up.

The problem is that i cannot set it to DMA, if i choose DMA if available, it just stays at "PIO Only". the bios and several windows diagnostics programs recognise it to be UDMA-5, but i just cant set it!

I've done a lot of searching the net over these past few days to try and fix it, and i've tried all these things:

Removing the Primary IDE Channel from device manager so it gets reinstalled
Removing the "SIS PCI IDE UDMA Controller" from device manager so it gets reinstalled
A program called SISIDE.exe, new drivers for the UDMA controller. Checking the BIOS, nothing has worked and i was hoping someone here might have an answer.

My system is:
AMD XP1800+
ECS K7S5A Mobo
Geforce 3 Ti200 128mb
768mb DDR memory


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Embattle]

Windows version?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

knew i'd forgotten something Windows XP Pro, SP1.

 

[Testin da Cable]

is your hdd cable an 80 or 40 wire variant? (thin/very fine or thick wires iow)

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

i have no idea...The one for the floppy drive seems much thinner than the ones for the Hard drives and CD drives...

I'm guessing its not the cable though (Only guessing) because the bios and some diagnostic programs pick it up as a UDMA-5 compatible drive.

 

[kameleon]

Has the cable connected to the HDD got a blue connector on one end?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Well from memory, one is black, one is white and i think one is blue.

I have another IDE cable here which is white, white and white.

 

[kameleon]

you need the one with the blue end. The blue end goes into the motherboard.

Ensure that DMA is turned on in BIOS .

also on the motherboard installation disk in the ide folder there is an sis ide driver for xp/2000 make sure you install this too.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I have tried several versions of that driver that i have found all over the net. Currently i have "SiS PCI IDE UDMA Controller" installed along with primary and secondary IDE channels.

I'll check again in the bios, Where exactly is it? maybe i was looking in the wrong place...

 

[kameleon]

its under peripherals i think, i couldnt tell you without shutting down


Have you got any non UDMA devices on the same cable as your hdd? if you have use the other cable you have and connect them to the other ide slot

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

My setup is:

Primary Channel: Hard Drive (MA), CD-Rom (SL)
Secondry Channel: CD-RW (MA)

the CD-Rom is normal DMA, not UDMA, right? could that be the problem?
i'll reboot now and have another look in the bios.

 

[kameleon]

Its pci busmastering you need to enable on pci/plug and play setup

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

in PCI/Plug and Play i only have these options:
Plug and play aware
AGP control
Primary graphics adapter
Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA


nothing about pci bus master

 

[kameleon]

update the bios

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

i'm not very knowledable when it comes to things like this, how would I go about doing that?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

okay, i found this: http://www.ecsusa.com/downloads/bios.html

but there are multiple instances of the K7S5A on there. how can i find out which one i have?

Sorry, i dont know much about computer hardware,

 

[kameleon]

looking at the mainboard from the front with the memory slots closest to you and the pci slots at the back, if you look at the pci slot furthest to the left (slot 5) the version number is printed on the board.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I havnt tried updating the BIOS yet, but i've been playing about a bit.

With the Hard Drive and CD-Rom on primary, they both only work in PIO. The CDRW on the secondary ide channel works in UDMA Mode 2.

With the Hard Drive on its own on Primary, it only works in PIO but the 2 CD-Roms on secondary both work in DMA.

the obvious next step is to put the hard drive on secondary..... It still only runs in PIO mode!!

argh.

Would i still need to update the bios, even though the CD-Roms can run in DMA??


Also, any more suggestions?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Okay, the current setup now is:

Primary (80 wire IDE Cable):
Master: Hard Drive - PIO
Slave: None

Secondary (40 wire cable):
Primary: CD-Rom - UDMA2
Secondary: CD-RW - UDMA2

and ideas?

I have tried swapping the cables, swapping where the cables are plugged in... its really starting to annoy me now. The worst bit is that i KNOW the hard drive supports UDMA because when it starts up it says

"#Hard Drive thingy# Ultra DMA Mode-5, S.M.A.R.T compatible"

 

[kameleon]

I can't understandd it myself, have a look next time you boot up and check what the bios date is. the ecs websites latest bios is 01 but mine is september 02!. Have you changed the settings to dma if available?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Yeah, its on DMA If availible, Could it be something to do with the drive?

Its partitioned into 2 40 GB Hard drives, and a few months ago i changed it from FAT32 to NTFS within windows.

a program i heard about called "Paragon partition manager" can display lots of useful information aobut the drive and the partitions are slightly different!

for C:\ the Bytes/Cluster is set to 4096 and for D:\ its set to 512, could this be the problem? because i also heard that the bytes/cluster can affect speed.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

anyone?

Would formatting fix it?

 

[Furr]

Formating!!!!

Could be that your cd Drive!

Keep the Hard disk on its own IDE channel and put everything else on the other one.

If that don't work , then go to a shop and buy a new IDE cable, if that dont work then ermmm... dunno?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

The hard drive is now on its own channel with an 80 wire cable, i have also tried it with 2 different 40 wire cables.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Interesting...

I just booted from a drive with Win98 installed and that drive runs absolotley fine in DMA mode.

Until i plug both hard drives in! Then neither of them will run in DMA Mode!!! What the?

booting from the 98 drive alone, that works fine in DMA mode,
booting from the 98 drive with the XP drive in neither of them work in DMA mode
booting from the XP drive alone wont work in DMA mode and
booting from the XP drive with the 98 drive in neither of them will run in DMA mode.

Now, does this mean there is something wrong with the drive? (But why wont it let anything work in dma mode when its installed on the same channel?)

Any suggestions?


this is starting to get annoying now

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

oh and dont say use the 98 drive its only a 10gb 5400rpm compared to the 80gb 7200rpm drive that currently has XP on it.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I finally updated the bios! and i now have the option of "PCI IDE busmastering" However, if i enable it, it says "Searching for boot record for IDE-0...Not Found" I also tried booting to windows 98 from IDE-1 and that diddnt work

Any suggestions?