Re: New Hd Install - No Udma Support, Dma 2 Only

I just tried something to see what would happen - I removed the primary
and secondary channels in device manager as well as the ide controller.
I then shut the computer down, and cleared the cmos. I figured this
should clear the bios and windows of hardware info, and start
everything fresh. Well, I reconfigured my bios, reloaded windows, and
winxp reloaded all the hardware and my SiS drivers. I tried loading
them manually, but windows says the current driver are already updated.
Now after loading this hardware win xp wanted to restart. Before
that, I took a peek at the devices on the channels. For the primary
channel with my boot drive it noted DMA enabled, but did not list a
current transfer mode and showed "Not Applicable". But for my 250 gb
drive it showed "Multi-word DMA-2"! As always. It's as though it is
hard wired in, simply bizarre.

I did try the drive on another (older) system, but it was using win
2000. It showed the transfer mode for both the boot drive and my
drive as "Udma Mode". No listing of UDMA type. The mobo probably only
supported UDMA-66 anyways. Not sure what to make of this.

BTW, my IDE drive version is:

5.1.1039.2041

The one from that package. The drivers for the primary and secondary
channels are from microsoft \system32, version:
date: 01/07/2001
ver:5.1.2600.2180

I'm assuming that this is for the channels themselves.

My next step is that I'm installing winxp temporarily on the new drive.
I will remove my current boot drive and set up the 250 gb as the
master. Then I will install WinXP (with SP2) and see if the drive is
recognised as UDMA-5 or 6. If it still says DMA-2, I plan to exchange
the drive. Might just be my hardware, but I'm not taking any chances.
Besides, the drive is supposed to be "whisper quiet", but when under
heavy use makes a racket compared to my older 20 gb. Probably nothing,
but better safe than sorry.

What do you think?


Cheffy wrote:
Thanks for the detailed response I'll try some of this out ASAP. My
mobo only supports up to 137 GB, but windows recognises more - Possibly
an issue there. But, I attached the 250 gb HD to another computer last
night running win 2k (older mobo, newer AMIBIOS than mine, not sure of
brand) and it recognised it as udma capable (did not give specific
mode, only said udma). I need to try it on another xp system , but
have no means to check right now.

I cannot find my exact mobo, next closest is this:

http://www.ikonpc.com/pmoreinfo.asp?iid=1917

Virtually identical except my south bridge says xp4 HT7961 - which is
the same as a the SiS 961 chip.

But PCChips doesn't list the bios flash for that model, next closest
being:

http://www.pcchips.com.tw/PCCWeb/Downloads/ProductsDetail_Download.aspx?DetailID=8&DetailName=BIOS&DetailDesc=M930L(V5.1a)&MenuID=35&LanID=0
Lists for v.1.5 - 5.1, my Mobo lists v1.2a in bottom corner - not sure
if that matters. Scared to flash it!

Will try some stuff out thpough, thanks again.

Paul wrote:
In article <1152596046.387760.86510@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Cheffy" <jshabaga@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

I recently purchased a diamondmax ultra 16 250 gb hd, and installed it
as a second HD as a master on the secondary ide channel using the cable
provided (80 wire) and the maxblast software. The drive works, but
responds only in multi-word dma 2 mode.

My boot drive, a 20 gb maxtor fireball, functions fine in UDMA 5. I
have a 1.5 GHz P4, SiS motherboard, running win XP pro. My AMI bios
sets and recognises the 250 gb hd as UDMA 6, but windows only allows
multi-word dma 2, despite the other HD set as UDMA 5. It would appear
that a miscommunication between the bios and XP is occurring.
Contacting maxtor gave no useful info.


I've tried uninstalling the primary and secondary channels and letting
windows reinstall it, updating my IDE drivers, altering registry values
to force it into UDMA ( and under device manager dma if available is
selected. NO dice. I have AMI bios that autoselects for UDMA so it
cannot be manually adjusted, but udma is recognised.

The 20 gb drive under the primary ide channel as a master, and the 250
gb drive as the secondary master. Changing the 250 gb drive to the
primary slave or master still keeps the multi-word dma 2 mode. Changing
cables makes no difference.


I tested the HD using the powerblast software, no problems, used other
freeware, no problems noted. But the transfer rate remains consistently
low at 16.4 mb/s, no ups, no downs. It's obvious that the restriction
in performance is due to it's inability to use UDMA instead of
multi-word dma 2.

I don't want to do a clean install of XP because of the time involved
with updates and making configuration changes. I've read in forums the
problem may be linked to the ESCD and that clearing it may solve the
problem, but I'm not certain about doing this. Would installing an
additional IDE controller card and forcing a new channel help? This is
very frustrating, because there appears to be NO good reason why it
does this. I've found two other people through usegroups that have had
the same problem, but the posts were old and no solutions noted other
than a clean install of xp for one person. If a clean install helps,
there must be a way to change the configurations somewhere.

I am out of ideas. PLease help!

Does your motherboard really support large hard drives ?
You need 48 bit LBA support, for a 250GB drive. The
transition point, is 137GB, so a 120GB drive doesn't need
48 bit LBA, while a 160GB or larger, does need 48 bit LBA
support. Now, I don't understand how the size issue would
have any impact on the transfer speed, so that is
certainly a mystery.

Maxtor provides documentation in the form of some manuals.
The manuals show more jumper settings, than their simple
minded knowledgebase does. For example, on PDF page 19,
a jumper position called CLJ is shown. When you install
a jumper in that position (independent of whatever other
jumper choices you made), that limits the capacity of
the drive to 32GB. You could test with that, and see if
the symptoms change or not.

The purpose of this test, is to see if the problem has
something to do with the large capacity of the drive.
Naturally, if the drive already has valuable data on it,
don't do this! This test is intended for the drive when
it doesn't have valuable data, and you are going to
format/partition it as the next immediate step. Changing
the hardware capacity of the drive, while is already has
a file system on the platters, would be deadly. So the
CLJ jumper can only be changed when your valuable data
is not on there.

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/manuals/diamondmax_17_product_manual_pata.pdf

And if you want a hardware solution that is known to support
large drives, try one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16816102027

That one is the retail version, and an OEM (card only)
version is available for a few dollars less. The
retail one would have cables with it. I believe I
have at least one computer here, that is booting
off that card.

Report back how your experiments go :-)

Paul

.

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