DMA 5 - Ultra ATA 100

[GTentori 0]

I just upgraded to Win200. I have an ASUS A7M266 and a WD Caviar 30 BB

 

Did SP2, but according to WinTune the transfer rate is 3.2 MB/s. With Win98 I used to get 5.8 MB/s

 

Installed the Via 3-1. Remember this board uses AMD 761, Via Southbridge 686B.

 

What is happening? How can I make sure Ultra ATA 100 is turn on?

[Ralf Hutter 0]

If you're using sp2 you don't need any of the Via crap, Win2000 has full chipset support for the AMD 761 set. I'd uninstall the 3-in-1 stuff (if you can) and run without it.

[Greggy 0]

RE: ATA-100 and Windows 2000

 

Just because you may have an ATA-100 IDE hard disk and a motherboard that supports ATA-100, it does NOT mean that your system will actually run the hard disk i/o sub-system at the ATA-100 specification!!!

 

I recently helped out a friend that had the following basic hardware:

 

AMD Athlon 1.4 CPU

Abit KT7A Motherboard (VIA KT133A) with 3R BIOS

512Mb PC133 SDRAM

IBM 30Gb 75GXP ATA-100 IDE hard disk

ASUS AGP GeForce2 GTS 64Mb

Windows 2000 SP2 with hotfixes etc

 

Now, one would expect the above system to run at ATA-100 right? WRONG!

 

Windows 2000 refused to run the hard disk at anything other than PIO mode - In terms of disk performance it was woeful. It took forever to do any hard disk operations such as copying data around etc. We tried everything including Windows SP2, VIA 4in1 drivers, different IDE cables (yes the proper type) and every hard-disk utility that IBM had on their support site. We were getting nowhere and very fustrated...

 

We decided to take a gamble, we ghosted the 30Gb IBM 75GXP to its replacement, a brand new 40Gb IBM 60GXP IDE hard disk (the same model as I use), removed the 75GXP and booted up - WOW!

 

Windows 2000 instantly reported UltraDMA mode for the new hard disk and the whole machine went into overdrive! We were soon copying 1000's of megs between our two PCs and the only thing holding us up was the 100Mbit LAN. His 1.4GHz PC was at last performing well!

 

So before you all blame your (VIA) motherboards and/or your operating systems, have a close look at your hard disk drive - it could be costing you major performance.

 

Regards

 

Greggy

1.33GHz Athlon, Abit KT7A (3R), 512Mb PC133 CAS2, Winfast GeForce2 GTS 32Mb (21.81), 40Gb IBM 60GXP (ATA-100), Intel 10/100 nic, Creative PCI128 sound, Windows 2000 SP2, VIA 4in1 (4.33) etc etc

[packman 0]

Yes, you DO need SP2 to get ATA100 operation. However, some hard drives have a firmware UDMA default setting and in lots of cases this is UDMA66, not UDMA/ATA100. It might be worth contacting your HDD manufacturer, to see if there's a firmware utility available to change from 66 to 100. There WAS with mine.

 

Also, I presume you realise that there are some different versions of SP2 around and that apparently only the 'network' version actually fully works? The others do not properly update some drivers. This situation is due to be fixed in SP3.

[zen69x 0]

1st, check out, as Greggy suggested if you are indeed running in PIO mode. Start device manager -> ata/IDE controllers -> primary (or secondary) IDE controller, double click here and choose the advanced settings tab. See if the current transfer mode is showing PIO or Ultra DMA... or something to that effect. If it's PIO mode, then that is most definitely your problem. As such it is not a "situation" and therefore I don't know how he means "fixed". Unless he is saying you will now have to download the entire thing even the files you do not, nor will ever need. Namely updates to Windows 2000 server editions.

 

As for UDMA66 or UDMA100, doesn't really matter, you will personally experience NO difference between the two. Benchmarks may show some difference, but not what you are seeing now. The difference between thses two interfaces is negligible with current IDE drives.

 

If it is set to PIO mode... change it to DMA if available... if it's already set to that, I may have a reg hack you can try... post back and let us know.

 

As for the network install for SP2 as mentioned by packman... What I think he was trying to say is that the "network" version is the full service pack as provided by Microsoft. It contains *all* the updates, whether you need them or not. You can get a more tailored to your system service pack if you go through Windows Update, i.e. it only downloads fixes in the service pack applicable to your machine.

 

As such it is not a "situation" and therefore I don't know how he means "fixed". Unless he is saying you will now have to download the entire thing even the files you do not, nor will ever need. Namely updates to Windows 2000 server editions.