X31 IDE changing from DMA to PIO mode

[oliversl]

Hi,
I have a X31 with Windows XP Pro that suddenly change the IDE channel from DMA to PIO, reducing the transfer rate from 70mbyte/s to 3mbyte/s. I have an SSD OWC Legacy on it.

Anyone knows how to force WinXP to use only DMA mode for IDE?

Thanks
Oliver

[mikemex]

If I remember correctly, Windows NT did that when there were recurrent transfer errors from/to the drive. Maybe you need to shield the SSD from external interference or worse, the SSD isn't as reliable as you think.

[oliversl]

Thanks,
I read something about Windows XP reverting to PIO when it got DMA timeouts.

I do found some atapi timeouts errors in eventviewer, so I'm contacting OWC if they have a firmware update.

I also checked for bad blocks with chkdsk, but it did found any.

Other issue is that the X31 has only 256MB of ram (the 1GB DIMM failed a few months ago), so there should be
more disk activity because of the more usage of the swap file.

I found this info about deleting the the DMA error "counter":
http://aiscl.co.uk/how_to_forcedma.php

And another solution was to change to PIO mode, click in OK, then change it back to "DMA if available".

My last question is that the IDE driver says it is from Intel, but when checking the Primary Master driver, it says the driver is from Microsoft. Should it be from Intel too?

Regards,
Oliver

[mikemex]

(the 1GB DIMM failed a few months ago)

Mine also failed from memory. I've not determined if it's the module or the slot.

Something feels suspicious... maybe it's not your machine but the model itself.

[oliversl]

The memory that failed was an IBM FRU 31P9835 from date 2005-10-27, origin TW, with chips from NANYA

Oliver