cannot enable ultra dma 2 for plextor px-712a

[1_smack_for_2]

Hi guys, I'm stuck with this and found no solution yet:

Using promise ultra100 card for hard drives and onboard ata66 controller for lite-on 52246s cdrw and plextor px-712a. Both cdrw/dvdrw support udma2, yet neither controller allows me to run them in Win XP at udma mode 2. For the cdrw no big deal, but I can use the extra speed for the plextor drive.

Here are the problems; connecting the optical and disk drives to the promise card, card's boot sequence shows udma mode 5 for the drives and udma mode 2 for the optical disks. But screen freezes at windows boot screen normal/safe mode. Connecting the optical drives to the onboard controller, the mode on both drives stays at Multi-word dma 2.

I've installed hyperion ide accelerator driver, via ide miniport driver, and ultra bus master to change the mode but no success. I have not installed the complete via hyperion or 4-in-1 drivers, because I dont want to test my luck with the setup and play around with system restore



Is having both hard and optical drives on the promise controller card, good or bad idea?
Anyone have suggestions on what I should try?


Computer setup:
Win xp pro, msi pvx6a motherboard, 1gb ram 1ghz p3.
Two harddrives connected to ide1 of promise ultra100 tx2 card using ata100 cable, and optical drives connected to onboard ide2.

[LoneWolf]

I wouldn't put the optical drives on the Promise card. You could have some really wierd problems.

What's the issue with your drives being at Multi-Word DMA 2 on the onboard controller? I wouldn't see that as a big issue. Both my drives are at Ultra DMA 2 in my system, which AFAIK is what they're supposed to be. If they're set at Multiword DMA 2 on yours, they are operating in DMA mode. Is your rip/burn speed limited when at this speed, or are you getting any nasty errors, buffer underruns, or timeouts when burning?

P.S. Are you using an 80-wire ATA cable for hooking up your optical drives, or the old-fashioned 40-pin IDE cable?

[1_smack_for_2]

Using drive for copying files from dvd to hard drive and also seeking through dvd movies pressed discs and ripped ones using high quality dvds, ritek, fuji, ty dvd's.

I saw in cdrlabs review that about the second half of the dvd read passes 12X (16.62Mb/s) and from plextor site the max speed for dvd-rom is 16X (22.16Mb/s). I tested my burns with nero cd-dvd speed and it does level off a little after 2.5gb mark at about 8.6x. And nero shows the Interface burst rate: 11 MB/sec (11350 KB/sec). Also, I'm not sure but I read that Multi-word dma2 does not support crc checking.

I dont know the kind of cable i have but it might be ata100/80pin cables, when I connected all the drives to the promise card it shows hard drives as udma 5, and optical drives as udma 2. I switched cables and same result.

[1_smack_for_2]

I updated the via drivers with via hyperion 4.53 and the optical and hard drives now boot and work off the promise ultra100 tx2 controller card. And I ran nero CD-DVD speed went up to huge! now disk speed reaches 12x on the outer zone, and the curve is nice and rounded, it was really jaggy and unstable with the onboard controller. Pretty much everything improved

Nero CD Speed Test results

General Information
Operating System Windows XP
Drive PLEXTOR DVDR PX-712A
Firmware Version 1.06
Serial Number 378980
Disc DVD-R
Capacity 4.36 GB

Transfer Rate
Start 5.01x
End 8.30x
Average 9.07x
Type CAV



Seek Times
Random 100 ms
1/3 109 ms
Full 178 ms

CPU Usage
1X 7 %
2X 13 %
4X 24 %
8X 46 %

Interface
Burst Rate 25863 KB/sec

Spin Up/Down Times
Spin Up Time 3.41 sec
Spin Down Time 4.29 sec

Load/Eject Times
Load Time 14.93 sec
Eject Time 1.40 sec
Recognition Time 0.00 sec

Log
Time Elapsed Action
[20:29:36] Starting Transfer Rate Test
[20:36:11] 6:34 Speed:5-8 X CAV (9.07 X average)
[20:36:11] Starting Seek Times Test
[20:36:21] Random Seek: 100 ms
[20:36:32] 1/3 Seek: 109 ms
[20:36:50] 0:39 Full Seek: 178 ms
[20:36:50] Starting CPU Usage Test
[20:37:05] CPU usage at 1X: 7 %
[20:37:20] CPU usage at 2X: 13 %
[20:37:36] CPU usage at 4X: 24 %
[20:37:51] 1:01 CPU usage at 8X: 46 %
[20:37:51] Starting Burst Rate Test
[20:37:53] 0:02 Interface burst rate: 25 MB/sec (25863 KB/sec)
[20:37:53] Starting Spin-Up/Down Test
[20:38:00] Spin-up time: 3.41 seconds
[20:38:15] 0:22 Spin-down time: 4.29 seconds
[20:38:15] Starting Load/Eject Test
[20:38:16] Eject time: 1.40 seconds
[20:38:31] Load time: 14.93 seconds
[20:38:31] 0:16 Recognition time: 0.00 seconds



General Information
Operating System Windows XP
Drive LITE-ON LTR-52246S
Firmware Version 6S0F
Serial Number
Disc Data CD
Capacity 79:15.22

Transfer Rate
Start 22.73x
End 52.08x
Average 39.41x
Type CAV



Seek Times
Random 92 ms
1/3 97 ms
Full 150 ms

CPU Usage
1X 11 %
2X 4 %
4X 7 %
8X 17 %

Interface
Burst Rate 21180 KB/sec

Spin Up/Down Times
Spin Up Time 0.07 sec
Spin Down Time 4.56 sec

Load/Eject Times
Load Time 1.50 sec
Eject Time 1.43 sec
Recognition Time 6.15 sec

Log
Time Elapsed Action
[20:29:36] Starting Transfer Rate Test
[20:36:11] 6:34 Speed:5-8 X CAV (9.07 X average)
[20:36:11] Starting Seek Times Test
[20:36:21] Random Seek: 100 ms
[20:36:32] 1/3 Seek: 109 ms
[20:36:50] 0:39 Full Seek: 178 ms
[20:36:50] Starting CPU Usage Test
[20:37:05] CPU usage at 1X: 7 %
[20:37:20] CPU usage at 2X: 13 %
[20:37:36] CPU usage at 4X: 24 %
[20:37:51] 1:01 CPU usage at 8X: 46 %
[20:37:51] Starting Burst Rate Test
[20:37:53] 0:02 Interface burst rate: 25 MB/sec (25863 KB/sec)
[20:37:53] Starting Spin-Up/Down Test
[20:38:00] Spin-up time: 3.41 seconds
[20:38:15] 0:22 Spin-down time: 4.29 seconds
[20:38:15] Starting Load/Eject Test
[20:38:16] Eject time: 1.40 seconds
[20:38:31] Load time: 14.93 seconds
[20:38:31] 0:16 Recognition time: 0.00 seconds
[20:48:40] Starting Transfer Rate Test
[20:50:46] 2:07 Speed:23-52 X CAV (39.41 X average)
[20:50:46] Starting Seek Times Test
[20:50:56] Random Seek: 92 ms
[20:51:06] 1/3 Seek: 97 ms
[20:51:21] 0:34 Full Seek: 150 ms
[20:51:21] Starting CPU Usage Test
[20:51:37] CPU usage at 1X: 11 %
[20:51:52] CPU usage at 2X: 4 %
[20:52:07] CPU usage at 4X: 7 %
[20:52:22] 1:01 CPU usage at 8X: 17 %
[20:52:22] Starting Burst Rate Test
[20:52:24] 0:02 Interface burst rate: 21 MB/sec (21180 KB/sec)
[20:52:24] Starting Spin-Up/Down Test
[20:52:28] Spin-up time: 0.07 seconds
[20:52:43] 0:19 Spin-down time: 4.56 seconds
[20:52:43] Starting Load/Eject Test
[20:52:44] Eject time: 1.43 seconds
[20:52:46] Load time: 1.50 seconds
[20:52:52] 0:09 Recognition time: 6.15 seconds

[1_smack_for_2]

Nero CD Speed Test results, Plextor px-712a on motherboard controller

General Information
Operating System Windows XP
Drive PLEXTOR DVDR PX-712A
Firmware Version 1.06
Serial Number 378980
Disc DVD-R
Capacity 4.36 GB

Transfer Rate
Start 5.01x
End 8.13x
Average 7.62x
Type P-CAV



Seek Times
Random 92 ms
1/3 101 ms
Full 168 ms

CPU Usage
1X 15 %
2X 26 %
4X 51 %
8X n/a

Interface
Burst Rate 11350 KB/sec

Spin Up/Down Times
Spin Up Time 0.00 sec
Spin Down Time 0.00 sec

Load/Eject Times
Load Time 15.00 sec
Eject Time 5.62 sec
Recognition Time 0.00 sec

Log
Time Elapsed Action
[10:24:22] Starting Transfer Rate Test
[10:31:54] 7:31 Speed:5-8 X P-CAV (7.62 X average)
[10:31:54] Starting Seek Times Test
[10:32:03] Random Seek: 92 ms
[10:32:13] 1/3 Seek: 101 ms
[10:32:30] 0:36 Full Seek: 168 ms
[10:32:30] Starting CPU Usage Test
[10:32:46] CPU usage at 1X: 15 %
[10:33:01] CPU usage at 2X: 26 %
[10:33:17] CPU usage at 4X: 51 %
[10:33:35] 1:05 CPU usage at 8X: n/a
[10:33:35] Starting Burst Rate Test
[10:33:37] 0:02 Interface burst rate: 11 MB/sec (11350 KB/sec)
[10:33:37] Starting Spin-Up/Down Test
[10:33:37] Spin-up time: 0.00 seconds
[10:33:47] 0:10 Spin-down time: 0.00 seconds
[10:33:47] Starting Load/Eject Test
[10:33:53] Eject time: 5.62 seconds
[10:34:08] Load time: 15.00 seconds
[10:34:08] 0:21 Recognition time: 0.00 seconds


Plextor on motherboard controller




Plextor and Lite-on on promise controller