promise ATA/133 controller wont go to udma

[catonmyhead]

promise ATA/133 controller wont go to udma for dvd burner

hello all, im new here, i will try to describe my problem as best i can, im not a computer nut so forgive me if i say something wrong.

when i got my new tower i was finally able to install another HD ( Western Digial 200 gig) dvd burner (Liteon), I already had the ATA card (Promise Ultra 133 TX2) installed with a device on it, but to get it to work right i had to put that device (a wester dig 120 HD) in the slave posticion on CS. So when i got the new HD and burner, i put the new hd on master on the primary ide port and put the dvd burner on CS in the master position on the secondary ide port. when i treid to burn a dvd, my comp ran so slow that it reset itself, later i looked at the boot up screen to see that that device was only operated at dma 2 and not UDMA 5 like everything else on the controller card. ive tried swapping my tdk cd burner with the Liteon and when on that second ide port it also will only go into dma 2 and not udma. I am using a 80 conductor cable. The box infront the card came in clearly states on the back that it you can "Attach four drives or devices to Ultra133 TX2". I cant seem to enter the cards bios during bootup by pressing del or F8 or and other F numbers. I also went through Device manager and had no luck finding a place to switch from PIO to UDMA.

im running win 2k on a Abit MB, 768 ddr ram and 1.4 athlon

any comments or suggestions are welcomed!

Thanks for reading

 

[ChickenMan]

I have an identical card but I only run my 2 burners ( cdrw and a dvdrw) off the card and they work as per their specifiaction. Im not aware of any key to get into the bios of that card but then I've never had to. Check on the Promise site and see if there are updated drivers.

 

[roadworker]

Put the hd with your os at the ide1 of your promise card with a 80pin cable,setting as master
Put the new hd on the ide 2 of your card,connect a 80 pin cable and set it as master too
If you have more than 2 burners/cdrom/dvdrom,connect 2 of your cd/dvd devices to the primary ide channel of your motherboard,1 as master,the other as slave on a 40 pin cable.
Do the same with any other roms/burners that are left on your secondary ide channel.....
Normally,all devices that are connected to your mobo will run at UDMA 2 after a reboot,wich is the maximum you will get of atapi devices.
Your harddisks,connected to the Promise card,will run at their fastest speed too....you won't see any UDMA setting in windows for them,that's because they're not connected to the mobo,but you will notice the speed difference...

PS:best drivers for me,are 2.0.0.42,but if you wanna use those,you have to force XP to install them,because it will complain that those drivers are not digitally signed,which really doesn't matter...

 

[catonmyhead]

Put the hd with your os at the ide1 of your promise card with a 80pin cable,setting as master
Put the new hd on the ide 2 of your card,connect a 80 pin cable and set it as master too
If you have more than 2 burners/cdrom/dvdrom,connect 2 of your cd/dvd devices to the primary ide channel of your motherboard,1 as master,the other as slave on a 40 pin cable.
Do the same with any other roms/burners that are left on your secondary ide channel.....
Normally,all devices that are connected to your mobo will run at UDMA 2 after a reboot,wich is the maximum you will get of atapi devices.
Your harddisks,connected to the Promise card,will run at their fastest speed too....you won't see any UDMA setting in windows for them,that's because they're not connected to the mobo,but you will notice the speed difference...

PS:best drivers for me,are 2.0.0.42,but if you wanna use those,you have to force XP to install them,because it will complain that those drivers are not digitally signed,which really doesn't matter...

swapping os hd positions sounds very risky to me, would the computer even bootup if i do that? (or am i that uninformed about computers ). When i first installed my 48x tdk cd burner it had the same problem untill i was told to try going into device manager and changing from PIO to UDMA. That did the trick and my burning time went from 12 minutes to 3 minutes.

 

[roadworker]

swapping os hd positions sounds very risky to me, would the computer even bootup if i do that? (or am i that uninformed about computers

Your computer won't bootup if you trade places from an os containing hd with another hd if they are already on the Promise ide channel....... however,if a harddisk with an os that's older than XP is connected on a motherboard ide channel ,you have to install the Promise drivers before you connect the hd to the TX2 ide 1,and it will work ..... if you have XP,the drivers will be automaticly installed when you connect the hd to the TX2.

 

[Dnd4evr]

I have had add on ATA 66, 100 and 133 controllers in my older computers. There are a few things to keep in mind. As roadworker said CD/DVD (atapi devices) are limited to UDMA2. Plugging your CD/DVD devices into your card even with an 80 conductor cable won't improve its speed.

These cards allow you to run up to 8 drives at once (1 master and 1 slave per channel) so your motherboard IDE ports are still usable and unfortunately the PC will try to boot from any drive plugged into them before trying the add on card. If you want to boot from the add on card, configuration is important. Another thing is that when you pair up devices on a channel, they operate at the speed of the lowest rated device. I never mix CD/DVD devices with hard drives or hard drives of different ratings unless forced to. Roadworkers configuration suggestion looks great for booting from the add on controller and keeping the drives separate.

I have never used the CS (cable select) feature on any of my PC's IDE devices and I suspect that this is a large part of your problem. CS controlls the drives by the cable wiring. I have only seen CS in use on floppy drive cables (that split and twisted section). Unless you have a cable specifically for this (I have never see one) you shouldn't use that jumper setting. Stick with the master/slave settings (1 each per channel).

Did you load the device drivers and are they working correctly? Without those the card will not operate at the higher speeds.

The rest is some related info on ATA performance and drives if your interested.

Some hard drives require you to configure the drives performance (I have seen this on Wester Digital drives). If its necessary, there is a utility for doing this. If you don't have the utility, it should be available from the drive manufacturer's WEB site.

You don't see much on an actual performance increase going from ATA 100 to ATA 133 (if any, see this link for a 133 review with performance charts http://www.extensiontech.net/reviews/storage/hd/max160.shtml). There was only 1 test in the link that showed performance above 100Mb/s and it was under 109 as a burst rate. Sustained transfer rates are much lower. A drive with a burst rate of less than 100, but a higher sustained rate will out perform this ATA 133 setup (see this http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200201/20020124WD1200JB_1.html).

 

[catonmyhead]

thanks for your replies guys, im gonna reformat and upgrade to xp and ill reconfigure my system so only HDs are on the ATA card and my opticals are on the MB ide ports, that should optimize my performance. Ill keep in mind all your comments and do further research to get the most out of my hardware.

 

[AZImmortal]

as others have already mentioned, running optical drives on the controller card is something u shouldn't do. although they'll be reported as running in UDMA 2, they'll actually be running in PIO.

besides keeping optical drives on the mobo and hard drives on the controller card, u should put each drive onto its own channel for maximum bandwidth for each device.

Another thing is that when you pair up devices on a channel, they operate at the speed of the lowest rated device.

this is actually no longer true with modern controllers. each drive's mode is independent of the other.

 

[mojo8850]

Hhhmmmmmm............. Thats definatly strange I also have the same controller card, I am using an 80 pin Cable, but instead im using 2 200gb HDD on 1 channel, I went to my device manager and checked to see if its on PIO MODE OR DMA MODE.

It was on PIO mode... But my card working fine... I will be putting another 2 200gb HDD on the secondry channel may be that might give the problem...........
Who's know wait and see

Regards

 

[scarecrow]

My Promise TX2-100 cannot definitely handle Atapi devices (disks fail to mount etc), and the same applies for yours. Like roadworker suggested (and you complied), move your harddisks on the PCI controller and put the Atapi devices onboard.
Alternatively, swap the Promise for something that REALLY works with Atapi, eg an Acard PCI IDE controller.

 

[Dnd4evr]

Thank you AZImmortal for updating me on the newer controllers. I had not seen this discussed in the publications I sometimes get to read (that's why I like reading these forums). Your post prompted me to do a little searching on the subject and I found this for anyone who is interested in reading.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Performance.htm

The Promise Ultra 100 & 133 TX2 controllers do support the independent drive timing.

I am not that familiar with Windows NT/2000/XP yet (this spring I will move up to XP when I build a new machine). Am I missing something or is the ability to check hard drive PIO/UDMA mode from Windows only possible with NT/2000/XP? The majority of my Windows experience has been with 95/98/98SE/ME and I haven't been able to check the status with these operating systems.

 

[Duracell]

in W9x you have to check each drive's properties for DMA in the Device Manager and not the IDE Controller Channels (like in W2k/XP)

Greetings from
Duracell

 

[Dnd4evr]

2 of my running systems have add in drive controllers. The one I use every day doesn't show the drives UDMA status from windows via device manager (it does report the status during the hardware initialization). The other one which I seldom get to use (my son is on it a lot) does. Very strange. I will have to see if a newer driver is available will correct this.

 

[roadworker]

I have a Promise Ultra 100 TX2,it's been used on 3 different mobo's and win 2000/Xp installations....so far,I've never seen it's DMA status anywhere else than @ the bios or POST....

 

[PC-GUY]

I have a Promise Ultra 100 TX2,it's been used on 3 different mobo's and win 2000/Xp installations....so far,I've never seen it's DMA status anywhere else than @ the bios or POST....

I have some no name Ultra ATA/133 PCI Raid Card (ITE IT8212 ATA RAID Controller) and I was think the same thing.

If there is away in the device manager or in win XP for that matter please share. Thanks

 

[Dnd4evr]

Good, then I'm not crazy or inept. I have the Promise Ultra 133 TX2 and it doesn't show the UDMA status in the device manager either (even with the driver update). Thanks for the feedback.