SATA Ultra DMA Mode

[Voyager22]

I have an ASUS P4P800SE Mobo with a Hitachi 120 GB SATA HD. The user's manual states that the SATA drive should operate up to 150 MB/s. The BIOS allows a setting of Ultra DMA Mode=5 as the max setting. This is also the same DMA Mode listed in Device Manager in WinXP. Is the DMA=5 operating at 150 MB/s?
Thanks.

 

[paparazi]

Voyager22
It might say " the bus is capable of up to 150MB/s"
But as you may or may not know, even the latest crop of drives are only capable of around 70MB/s sustained transfer, with bursts a little over the 100MB/s mark.

Point is, don't get carried away with the quoted bus speed, this is no reflection on actual hard drive performance.

Martin



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[cdogg]

Also, the microsoft generic IDE driver maxes out at DMA mode 5. You need to make sure you have the correct chipset IDE driver installed to show the faster mode 6 (ATA/133).

But like paparazi explained, the difference is very little if any. Unless you are in a RAID configuration, the benefit is very little, especially as a drive begins to become fragmented and worn down over time.

This link goes into some additional detail:

http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/HDDProblems.htm#udmamode

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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