Ultra dma mode 6..

Ashman UK

Ashman UK

Ashman UK

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Joined
5 Jul 2004
Posts
371
Location
Gateshead, United Kingdom
Hi

I have a wdc 500gb sata II hard drive as my main hd.

The current speed it is running at is ultra dma mode 5 when i know that i can support upto ultra dma mode 6 as reported by hd tune.

However i cant find anywhere in device manager to change it to ultra dma mode 6 as it reports its in ultra dma 5 mode.

Any ideas?..

Thanks.
 
I has that problem back in the day when SATA came out and I had a NF2 with Silicon 3112 Controler, it took a driver many builds later from Silicon to get UDMA Mode 6, it was 5 for many, many months.

So its down to the Sata bios in your Mobos bios or the drivers.
 
Yeah cause if i put the drive on the silicon sata controller on this mobo it will come up as ultra dma mode 6 but it wont boot if i try it on that controller.

Ill see if i can get newer drivers for the ata controller on this or try and load the sata silicon drivers then try booting up.
 
Use your Sata Controler thats on the PCI-E bus not the silicon one or you will be limited to max of 133MB/Sec on old PCI bus in any set up inc Raid.
 
Yeah strange because i have just connected now to the silicon sata controller by first enabling it in the bios and then loading drivers in vista then connecting hd sata cable to the silicon sata controller.

Strange thing is now ultra dma mode 6 is enabled when i do a hdtach test its burst speed is only upto about 118mb/sec yet when its connected to the intel sata controller which only allows it to run at ultra dma mode 5 i get a burst speed of upto 180mb/sec?.

So average read speed is the same in hdtach at about 61mb/sec so am i better of leaving on the intel sata controller and getting higher burst speeds @ ultra dma mode 5 or on the silicon sata controller @ultra dma mode 6 but getting only burst speeds of upto 118mb/sec only?.

Just seems odd that i get higher burst speeds on ultra dma mode 5.
 
You are now on the old PCI bus its max is 133MB/Sec, thats why slower now, the Intel one is on the PCI-E bus so 300MB/Sec.

Yes weird you get 118 when UDMA5 is 100 but its only a guide and you may be slightly higher as its only lacking a driver (could be inbetween lol) and the hardware can go faster.
 
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Yeah i think im understanding this now as i looked in device manager and it says it on the pci bus.

So basically i think i need to put it back on the intel sata controller which puts it on an ata channel @ultra dma mode 5 but gives me the burst speeds of upto 180/mb sec as it should be for a sata II drive.

Thanks for clearing that up, gonna swap back to the intel controller @ultra dma mode 5 for the higher burst speeds as it should be and i think its possibly a driver i need for the intel controller from intels site for the ata controllers to enable udma6 on the intel sata controller.
 
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It wont matter in real term use as no single HDD gets 100MB/Sec sustained, it would only be a issue for Raid, you will get a driver or sata bios I hope, try Googling it, must be others in same situ.
 
I had a similiar problem where a UDMA6 drive was being run in some kind of PIO mode and performing horribly, there was also no option to change this in Device Manager, I fixed it by going to the BIOS and enabling it under the hard drive details itself. But it looks like you've already scoured the BIOS in this case.
 
helmutcheese said:
You means it was running some mode like " Ultra DMA Multi-word Mode" or was it actually PIO mode with is 16MB or less depending on modes.
Click to expand...

No actually PIO, HDTach verified it was running extremely slow. Constant low speed across the disk.
 
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