harddrive locked in PIO mode

[blackdragonx1186 0]

my primary drive recently went into PIO mode, and i wuz wondering if ne one knows if its possible by software, or some other means, 2 take it out of PIO mode. it wuz my fault, and it may b damaged. i wuznt paying attention and my elbow slammed into it, hard, hard enough 2 freeze it, and knocked it into PIO mode. it wuz running dma mode 5, but is now in PIO. its a western digital 80 gig special edition, IDE version. ive already ordered a new drive, same drive except its a sata version, and im hoping 2 b able 2 ghost it. id still like 2 use this drive for storage, but its kinda useless in PIO mode. ne help would b appciated.

[American Zombie 0]

Go into device manager and uninstall your drive then reboot and see what you get when the OS detects it again.

 

Reason:

Quote:

For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

 

In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.

 

Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).

 

If the mini-IDE driver for the device does not support stepping down transfer modes, or if the device is running UDMA mode 0, Windows XP will step down to PIO mode after encountering six or more CRC errors. In this case, a system reboot should restore the original DMA mode settings.

 

All CRC and timeout errors are logged in the system event log. These types of errors could be caused by improper mounting or improper cabling (for example, 40-pin instead of 80-pin cable). Or such errors could indicate imminent hardware failure, for example, in a hard drive or chipset.

 

 

 

[peterh 1]

You can change modes in Device Manager.

1. Load devmgmt.msc

2. Select IDE ATA/ATAPI Devices

3. Select Properties of Primary IDE Controller

4. Click on Advanced Settings.

5. It should show current setting and option to change setting from a pull down list

6. change setting, close dev manager and reboot.

 

[kalimeeri 0]

This has happened to me and my daughter a couple times, mostly on CD drives (the result of repeat read attempts on a damaged CD). The advice above about removing and letting Windows reinstall the device is sound (haven't tried the other method), although IIRC I've had to remove the IDE 'Controller' itself in order to get Windows' attention. I did have one hard drive do it (a factory replacement of a warranted WD 160-gig), but by that time I had already bought a new, larger drive that required a different driver. So to this day I don't know if the problem happened when my original drive crashed, or if the refurbbed 160 WD sent was faulty. But I would say that if your drive repeatedly goes into PIO mode, it's time for a new one.

[Champion_R 0]

The first thing I would try and do is change the setting in device manger to PIO Only and reboot. Once the system comes back up I would then try and change it back to DMA if available and reboot. If that doesn't work then I would uninstall the IDE controller in device manager then reboot and see if that helps.

 

If that fails I would then try the drive in another computer and see if you can boot in UDMA. It is possible that the drive has been damaged and as a result it will only fucntion in PIO mode.

 

Also try checking the event logs on boot. I've seen entries appear in the event log when drives are stuck in PIO mode.