By Utsav-Goswami
most of us using optical drives and hard drives sometime or the other have to bear the
problem of the transfer mode being changed from UDMA to pio.It is very irritating because
the cpu usage shoots up to almost 100% and no multi tasking is possible.
So have no fear because UTSAV is here.
I will give a step by step tutorial to change the transfer mode to UDMA from pio without
reinstalling windows.
There are also some registry hacks so use them at your own risk.
to open registry editor goto start then click on run and type in ‘regedit’ except the
quotes. press enter.
For optimum transfer efficiency, the IDE channels should be using UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory
Access) and not PIO Mode (Programmed Input/Output). But Windows frequently decides on many
systems to use the latter.
So what’s the diff between the major transfer mode groupings? It’s most importantly about
what hardware in your system is providing the grunt for data transfers:
Mode
Explanation
PIO
Programmed Input / Output
The CPU manages the transfer of data between system memory and the storage device. Supports
bus speeds up to 16MB/sec, if your processor can keep up. Nothing built this century should
be using PIO.
DMA
Direct Memory Access
The bus-mastering system controller (a.k.a. DMA controller) is programmed to manage the
transfer, freeing the CPU to do other stuff while the DMA controller does its thing. It’ll
also support bus speeds up to about 16MB/sec.
UDMA
Ultra Direct Memory Access
A modern (I think 64-bit?) version of the DMA method. It’s the current standard for high
speed storage devices with bus speeds up to 100MB/sec.
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