UDMA-5 transfer mode

[WhosYourDaddy]

I recently installed a second hard drive (WD 120GB) on my new Dell Dimension 4550 (w/ XP home). The drive is installed as "slave" on primary with the original hard drive from Dell (WD 30GB) as "master" on primary (jumpers set to CS as required by Dell - by "slave" and "master" I'm referring to position on IDE cable). I used the original IDE cable from Dell with master connected to end and slave connected to middle. The installation went well except that I noticed transfer mode of slave set to PIO when checking Device Manager after installation. With advice from other forum I downloaded and installed the Intel Application Accelerator (IAA) version 2.3 and that increased the transfer mode of the slave up to UDMA-2. I cannot set the transfer mode above UDMA-2 for this second drive. The transfer mode of the master has always been UDMA-5.

The second hard drive is capable of UDMA-5 transfer mode and the IAA Report tab confirms this. Below is shown the pertinent report data for primary master and slave drives. I notice some differences between the master and slave drives report data (see Cable Type (Host), UDMA Timing Register, and Base Clock settings):

Primary Master Report Info:
UDMA Mode Support: 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
.
.
Default Transfer Mode: UDMA-5
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA-5
Transfer Mode Limit: No Limit
Cable Type (Device): 80 Conductor
Cable Type (Host): 80 Conductor
PIO PPE: Enabled
UDMA Control Register: Ultra DMA Mode Enabled
UDMA Timing Register: CT = 3 CLK / RP = 16 CLK
Base Clock: Ultra DMA 100 Timings

Primary Slave Report Info:
UDMA Mode Support: 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
.
.
Default Transfer Mode: UDMA-2
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA-2
Transfer Mode Limit: No Limit
Cable Type (Device): 80 Conductor
Cable Type (Host): 40 Conductor
PIO PPE: Enabled
UDMA Control Register: Ultra DMA Mode Enabled
UDMA Timing Register: CT = 2 CLK / RP = 4 CLK
Base Clock: Ultra DMA 33 Timings

Do I need a new IDE cable (instead of the original provided by Dell?) to obtain UDMA-5 transfer for second (slave) drive? I'm pretty sure it's 80 conductor type.

I don't understand the 40 conductor data for Host Cable Type on the Slave report. I also don't understand the UDMA Timing Register data or the Base Clock data. Are these setting that I could/should change manually?

Is it possible to have both hard drives in UDMA-5 transfer mode?

Any advice, experience, feedback, guesses, etc. would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[roamer1]

Hi, WhosYourDaddy,

Barring any goofy bios that is native to dell, you should have no issue with running both drives at udma5. your cable should be fine, too as it is running one on udma5, so it must be an 80. you may wish to replace it to eliminate it as the cause, but I doubt it.

Check your drive controllers in Device Manager to make sure they are set to the optimum dma level. Make certain disk caching is activated for the offending drive

Check the HDD manufacturers site for ATA utilities to reset your drives ATA level. It seems to be running as an ATA33.

 

[WhosYourDaddy]

I found that Primary Drive 1 was set to "Off" in System Setup Program. I changed the setting to "Auto" and now all HDDs are operating at UDMA-5.

Strange that the second HDD worked at all before with setting at "Off" - but all is well now so I'm happy.

Thanks for the assistance.

 

[roamer1]

LOL

WhosYourDaddy,

It is so nice when it's something simple!

Congrats.