What is the DMA setting for hardware?

[tgzo]

I have seen the option of turning it on or off in my cd burner properties, what is the DMA anyway? And is it better for my cd burner to have it on or off?

 

[LuNoTiCK]

DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, I have no clue what it means, but turn it on. It is good and needed.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Yeah, I just got a DVD player and my PC started belching out DMA jargon. I don't know, but I'm curious as to what the hell it is.

 

[dowxp]

its good for you

 

[bevancoleman]

It means Direct Memmory Access 🙂

This is my understanding of what it is;
DMS is method of directly accessing the system memmory without have to go via the CPU. Transfering data via the CPU is bad because the device has to generate an interupt (basically a request for CPU time) every time it needs to transfer a few bytes, doing this thousands of time a seconds can really slow things down.

 

[tgzo]

Should I turn on DMA for all my CDROM drives and harddrive?
I mean if it's really good for my comp, why didn't the OS turn it on by default?

 

[bevancoleman]

Yes DMA should be turned on. The reason that Windows leaves it off is because earlier machines had some problems with DMA. You will really see the differnt when transfering file accoss HDD driver

Example; Transfering data off a old 6Gb Hdd onto a new seagate
DMA off - >30 mins, and the machine was slugish, could see the screen redrawing
DMA on - 7 mins, could hardly tell 🙂