David G wrote:

> /Bob, I need a little educating here. What is PIO and DMA mode? I
> have not found anything refering to this in Device Manager --- am I
> looking in the right place? The drive is a WD 80GB bought new about a
> year ago./
> //
> /David/


With DMA (Direct Memory Access), the CPU tells the HD (Hard Drive) the
params
of the transfer: size, direction, starting address on HD, and starting
address
in RAM (Random Access Memory is used by the CPU); the HD executes the
transfer
by directly accessing RAM.

With PIO (Programmed Input Output), the CPU accesses RAM for the HD. As you
might imagine, data rate suffers a lot when the CPU has to fondle every
byte.
Also, PIO mode uses a lot of CPU power assisting the HD this way.

Under Device Manager, expand the IDE Controllers item, and right-click
on the
IDE Channel items, then click on the Properties of the channel your slow HD
uses - that will show you (under the Advanced Settings tab) whether it uses
PIO or DMA mode and the specific flavor of that mode. With a newish HD, I
would expect to see the Current Transfer Mode = Ultra DMA Mode 5 (or 4).


--
Cheers, Bob