ATA 100 help!

frankroh

Member
Jun 15, 2001
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I've a IBM Deskstar UDMA ATA100 HD which is only running as ATA66 (mode 4) on my box. How do I get it to work in mode 5 (ATA100)??? I've checked the BIOS and it is set to mode 5 but device manager in win2k says mode 4.

Any suggestions????
 

frankroh

Member
Jun 15, 2001
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BIOS actually says mode 5 (ATA100)! But Win2k (SP2) and WinXP says mode 4.
Who do I believe??? :)
 

ceraph

Member
Aug 4, 2000
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Try reading these:

Post 1
Post 2

>> btw, ATA/66 is fine as the drive cannot go above 40MB/s

True, both ATA/66 and ATA/100 cannot SUSTAIN above 37MB/sec. However, ATA/100 can get bursts of over 100MB/sec, while ATA/66 cannot attain bursts over ~75MB/sec (usually).

You have some options if you want to find out what mode you're currently in. They're also mentioned in the earlier notes I linked to, but I can restate some of them here, and add some:

  • Go to IBM's drives table and find your drive. Then go to the Downloads section of your drive and download the IBM feature tool (v 1.20) to specify/change DMA mode on the drive. When you run this, it should say that the drive is in DMA 5 mode.
  • Start up the MMC performance tool on Win2k and start logging read/write/cumulative speeds for the filesystem. If you copy files ACROSS (not within) disks and get peaks of over 100, you're at ATA/100.
  • Read the other posts to find out more about SP2, ATA/100, and what the device settings do. I don't feel like rewriting all that info here =).
  • If all else fails, and you still can't get Windows to go to DMA 5, despite having SP2 installed, you can always try installing Intel's ATA/100 driver for Windows. This will only work, however, if your motherboard is based on an intel chipset and has an onboard ATA/100 controlller.