Enabling DMA 100 under Windows 2000

[Stoffer 0]

The subject says it all. How do u enable DMA 100? I ran a Sisoft Sandra test which gave me a result that match the one of a DMA 66 drive.

My drive is a Seagate IV 40Gb IDE 100.

I also ran PC-Mark 2002 which gave me score about 600. With DMA 100 enabled it should be around 800-900.

[DosFreak 2]

Sandra/PCMark/HDTach are not good benchmark programs for Hard Drives.

 

How do you have your HD's hooked up? To a PCI Controller card? To a integrated Highpoint/Promise controller on the motherboard? or the integrated controller on the motherboard?

 

Verify that the settings in the BIOS/Windows are set to the appropriate settings. IIRC, DMA/100 is DMA5.

[tuneS 0]

If you have a UDMA-100 compatible motherboard/controller and an appropriate 80-pin IDE cable (older 40-pin cable won't do), then there should be no hardware restrictions. Now, if your Windows 2000 version is prior to Service Pack 2, then you'll have to download that service pack or, alternatively, the following hotfix: http://download.microsoft.com/download/w..._SP2_x86_en.EXE

which corrects that specific issue.

[Bursar 0]

Also, I'm fairly sure that if you have an ATA66 and an ATA100 drive sharing the same IDE port, they'll both run at the slower speed.

[adamvjackson 0]

Well, the drives will run at the same speed, you'd just be more likely to hit the top end of the bandwidth limitation, if you frequently copy/move large files between the two drives.

[JP- 0]

Dosfreak, why is HDTach not good for benchmarking hard drives?

 

PCMark and sandra, yeah terrible for benching hdds, but as far as i can see HDTach is great.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Quote:

Also, I'm fairly sure that if you have an ATA66 and an ATA100 drive sharing the same IDE port, they'll both run at the slower speed.

uuuh, apparently no. I did claim this here at these forums once afew months back, and got a hailstorm of ppl shouting no, not anymore.
The ATA inteface has apparently overcome this limitation.
See this thread: http://www.ntcompatible.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20744&highlight=ata

I'd still keep my HD.s on different channels though, old habits are hard to break

H

[Bursar 0]

Ah right. I obviously haven't been keeping up with current affairs then

[BladeRunner 0]

Damn, I was beaten to it

All Intel IDE controllers for the past few years have had the ability to run IDE devices at different speeds.

So even an ATA-33 device along with an ATA-100 device will not result in either device slowing down - pretty nice feature.

 

However, I cannot comment on other chipsets from VIA or SIS, I can only assume they have developed a similar feature.

[packman 0]

Stoffer,

 

I've got that very drive, used with Windows 2000 and Service Pack 3. You need to download to a bootable floppy the special UDMA utility, from Seagate's website. You'll find it among the webpages devoted to that drive and similar IV series. This alters the firmware of the drive to make it run at the appropriate speed.

[Stoffer 0]

k packman sound interesting. BTW im running fully updated Win2k.

Isnt there a big risk that the Harddrive will fuck when u start messing with the firmware. It primary master on the onboard IDE controller of my ASUS A7V333 mobo with the newest VIA 4in1. The slave is an IBM 60GXP 40 IDE 100.

[packman 0]

Unless you can see, during the DOS-type bootup (that short sequence between POST and Windows starting to load), that HDD0 is already supposed to be running at ATA100, you DEFINITELY have to run that UDMA utility of Seagate's, as otherwise the drive simply won't operate at that speed. It's very simple indeed to run (provided you've access to an A prompt ouside of Windows; boot from a Win98 startup floppy). Indeed, at Seagate's website for these drives, there's a description of what to do.

 

I had to do that for mine. It was factory-set to run at ATA66. I've also had to do that kind of thing for a Fujitsu drive that I use.

 

Perhaps you don't have access to an A or C prompt outside of Windows because you've set up Win2K to run in NTFS, rather than FAT32? Hmmm. Perhaps you and others will begin to realise some of the advantages of running under FAT32, even though it seems old hat.

 

If you can't get to an A prompt outside of Windows (these UDMA utilities are designed to work only in a DOS environment, usually), I suggest you e-mail Seagate for advice as to an alternative method to run the utility.

[Stoffer 0]

Well, im running Win2k on a FAT32 partition. But here is some weird stuff. My seagate drive is made of two partitions, both FAT 32.

There is a 5Gb partion for windows and a 35Gb partition for games, music etc.

The first test i ran where i got the bad score was on the 5Gb partition.

Yesterday i ran a test on the 35Gb partion. This test was better than a standard ATA 100 7200 RPM drive!!!

Is it possible that the partitions can be run in different speeds? That doesnt make sense to me.

During post i right after the memory test and the detection of drives, i can see that the drive is running UDMA 5 which is the same as ATA 100.

I guess when it comes down to it, its just the test programs which are fucked.

I downloaded a Sysinfo tool called AIDA32 and it also said that the drive was running ATA100.

Does anyone know a good program for testing harddrives when Sisoft and PC mark are so bad.

[packman 0]

No, as far as I'm aware, all partitions should run at either the default UDMA speed or the UDMA speed that you choose when you run the manufacturer's utility. I run three partitions myself, at ATA100.

 

Your test programs are no doubt faulty and misleading in the results they give. SiSoft Sandra is notoriously inaccurate for some things, at least the shareware version is.

 

If the post-POST listing shows UDMA5 for that physical drive, you've nothing to worry about. Ensure that the drive is set up to UDMA mode in Device Manager as well. In Device Manager, it should be under:

 

ATA/ATAPI Controller/Primary IDE Channel/Advanced Settings tab/Device 0.

[packman 0]

Stoffer,

 

I don't know whether this is of any use at this late stage but, before SP3 was issued, Win2K didn't support ATA100 per se. However, a patch for it was made available by Microsoft. The Q article on it might still be around at Microsoft's website. It was:

 

Q260233 - "Support for ATA100 (Mode 5) in Windows 2000".

 

The article starts "Windows 2000 does not support ATA 100 (Mode 5) for IDE hard disks. All ATA 100 IDE hard disks that are used with Windows 2000 default to ATA66 (Mode 4)".

 

I didn't start using that Seagate ATA100 drive until SP3 was on the scene and, as I mentioned before, it was necessary for me to run the Seagate utility, anyway. So, if you're truly using SP3 and have also made use of that downloadable Seagate utility, you should be okay.