Ultra DMA2

For some reason Windows sets my primary IDE to Ultra DMA2. This is slowing down my hard drives.

I have on the primary IDE channel two hard drives. The system drive is an IBM 40GB 7,200 RPM ATA100. The data drive is a Maxtor 120GB 7,200 RPM Ultra ATA133. They are set on cable select. Would the ATA/Ultra ATA interfaces on the same ribbon cause a problem? I should think not, but I am obviously not an expert. My system certainly should be able to support DMA5.

I have two optical drives on the secondary running at DMA2, but that is fine. I am only concerned with the primary channel.

Dell 8200
XP Home SP2
P4 1.8GB
512 RAM


Thanks.

A Dell 8200 is supposed to support up to an ATA-100 HD.
So the ATA-133 HD that's installed on it will theoretically run only up to a max burst speed of 100 MB/s, and not the specified 133 MB/s.
But both HD's should be recognized higher than a UDMA-2(ATA-33).

Make sure that BIOS has 'Auto' enabled for the IDE 1 controller's UDMA setting.

If that's ok, then it's possible than Windows has reduced the UDMA setting due to errors writing to and reading from the drives.
Check that an 80-wire IDE cable is installed, the cable is securely connected to both HD's, the cable's red or blue or gray stripe along the one edge is next to the power cable on the back of the drives and next to pin 1 at the MB connectors, and the primary HD is connected to the IDE cable's blue connector, the secondary HD is connected to the black one, and the gray one is connected to the MB.

If those are ok, then see if jumpering the HD's as Master and Slave helps.

If no luck, then install a different known working 80-wire IDE cable.

I fixed it. I switched from cable select to master/slave. Now the primary channel is Ultra DMA 5. I rebooted 5 times to make sure it "took". It did.

Thanks ski for your help.

You're welcome.
Glad to hear that you got it fixed, and thanks for posting back with the solution.