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View Full Version : DMA on my Slave Hard Disk: how do i know if its on or off? (Win XP)



sachin tendulkar
12-04-2002, 12:44 PM
Ok guys, I've never spent 3 days trying to get something to work!
This time I did!, I use Pinnacle Studio DV 7 to bring video from my Digital Camcorder to my hard disk. My Master Disk, a WD 20Gb 7200 RPM ATA100 drive works perfectly in Studio. But I cannont use a 20GB disk for editing video, They eat up like 15Gb/hour of digital Video. SO I go to Circuit City, but a WD 120 GB 7200RPM ATA100 drive for 89.99 (Yeah Black Friday deal!!), I installed on my computer as a slave on the same IDE cable as the mater drive. Everything seemed to work perfectly, XP recognised it and installed it. I then formatted it in NTFS. Then I open Pinacl Studio and go the damn thins says my new 120 GB drive isnt fast enough to transfer video from my camcorder!!
I tried everthing, changing the IDE cable, changing the position of the drive in accord with the cable (middle and end), tried calling Western Digital, they say there's nothing wrong with 'their' drive and ask me to call Pinnacle!!: I call Pinnacle (not an 1-800 number), they put me on hold for 40 mins, still no picks up!!! I hanged up, and literally threw the phone away!!!:

Ok, the only other possible thing is that, xp has not enabled DMA on my new 120 gb hard disk (slave), I know that its default for xp to enable DMA in any new disk, but 'maybe' xp messed up and didnt enable DMA on my new drive!!!:

Anyone and I mean anyone know how to get this damn thing to work? Thats: Anyone know how to check if DMA is on or off on my new disk?
OR: any other way to get it to work?!!!!!!:

Ok im settling down Sighhhhhhh

Spigidyak's reply:
To check DMA, go to the device manager then check IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers from there you can check to see each IDE channel and the DMA properties. However your problem could be that the drive is on slave while the program is installed on the master. This puts a big lag on the channel. I suggest moving the 120GB drive to master on the other channel (easy lazy fix) or move over to the 120GB drive as your boot drive. That should be the fix to your speed problems.

sachin tendulkar's reply:
Ok, Spigidyak, I think DMA is the problem! Cos, I did what u said to check DMA setting and Device 0 (20Gb) has current transfer mode as Ultra DMA, but Device 1 (120Gb) has PIO as its current transfer mode. The transfer mode for both devices is set as 'DMA if available'.

What do I have to do get DMA working on the second drive
Thanks

i6s1
12-04-2002, 03:12 PM
Had the same problem with my DVD drive, choppy playback.

Enable DMA in your BIOS.

seqiro
12-04-2002, 11:33 PM
When all else fails and you can't enable DMA mode, uninstall the drivers for the Primary IDE channel and reboot. Windows XP will re-install the drivers and usually you can then set DMA mode.

eSDee
12-04-2002, 11:49 PM
I like Spigs idea of moving it to another channel. Perhaps your software requires atleast ata100 speed to your hard drive. Isn't it true that if you have 2 drives on ata 100, that drops your speed to something like ata66? Does it say anywhere in the specs what kind of speed it wants?

sachin tendulkar
12-05-2002, 04:21 AM
Hey guys, i6s1's idea worked!
I enable the drive in BIOS and xp recognised the drive as UDMA!
Yeah, i dont know why, but now my 20gb drive acts like its a ata66 drive! But I dont really care, both are fast enough for me. 120 Gb works at 45mb/sec now.

Thanks guys