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Hard Drive PIO Problems

HardcoreRobot

HardcoreRobot

Lifer
Lately I have been having a problem with 2 of my hard drives resetting themselves to PIO mode. Needless to say, this sucks. What is odd is that they are both the slave drives of their respective channels. Every time I reset they go back to the proper DMA mode, but after some time of casual computer use (haven't found anything that triggers the downgrade), they set themelves into PIO mode.

What could be the cause? I havent had any performance or reliability issues with the drives before. One is an 80gb that is probably out of warranty, and the other is a <1 yr old 250. I plan to get some new HW soon, and reinstall XP (finally upgrade to SP 2 also), but there is data I would like to backup off these drives before I do that, and DVD burns fail due to the ghetto PIO mode? Any suggestions?

My bro recommened I run some SMART diagnostics on them (though I am not certain the problem is HW). Can anyone recommend good utils for that? TIA
 
PIO mode is enabled by default in the following situations:
...
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).



THAT WAS FOUND HERE:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/...h/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx
 
To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Click to expand...
this is what motivated me to finally update to sp2. thus, necessitating the backup of my files and putting me back at square one.

on multiple occasions i have uninstalled and reinstalled the ide drivers, and inevitably they both reset to PIO. im looking for the cause...
 
Try uninstalling the IDE controller and letting Windows redetect it.

If you keep getting the errors, then you need to find the problem.
 
Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Try uninstalling the IDE controller and letting Windows redetect it.

If you keep getting the errors, then you need to find the problem.
Click to expand...
Please read my initial post. I have done this multiple times.

 
there has actually been a lot of good advice in the thread that i will try out

the motherboard is a Asus A7M-266D. im not at home, but i think its the secondary slave. i am not sure what ide drivers i am using (microsoft, amd or via). i installed some SMART monitoring software and sure enough the drive that was acting up the most intermittently returns bursts of CRC errors. the other drive that had been set to PIO mode has not reset back to PIO lately, so im not goign to worry about that. right now i am trying to get all my data off the drive and then try to RMA it.
 
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