# Monday, July 10, 2006

I had a few links i wanted to read later and just posted them here.

Tip for UDMA-6

How to Check Current Transfer Mode

  1. Open Device Manager
  2. Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
  3. Double click on Primary IDE Controller or Secondary IDE Controller
  4. Go to the Advanced Settings tab to see the current transfer modes. If you see anything besides UltraDMA-6, and especially if you see PIO Mode, then follow the steps below.

How to Force UltraDMA-6

  1. Open up the Registry Editor.
  2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
  3. There are several sub-keys under this one, such as 0000, 0001, etc. You are interested in two of them that say Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel.
  4. Make the following changes to both of those keys:
    1. Delete any attributes named MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This resets the tracking for errors that Windows uses to determine when the transfer mode should be lowered.
    2. Add an attribute with the name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and a DWORD value of 1. This tells Windows that it should lower the transfer mode when there are six consecutive errors instead of six cumulative errors.
    3. If they exist, set the following keys to a hexadecimal value of ffffffff (eight F's). This will change the transfer modes to UltraDMA-6:
      • MasterDeviceTimingMode
      • MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • SlaveDeviceTimingMode
      • SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
    4. Reboot your computer and check the devices to see if they are set to UltraDMA Mode 6.