I am using Nero Burning Rom and Recode 2 and although its working fine there seems to be an issue with my DMA selection. I am using a Plextor 708A(DVD +/- RW) on an Nvidia mobo(msi K8N Neo Plat) which of course uses the NForce3 250 ATA controller. When I check the controller in device manager it shows the Plextor's transfer mode as "UDMA 2 - Ultra33". However when I check the logs created by Nero this is what I see:
=== Scsi-Device-Map ===
CdRomPeripheral : PLEXTOR DVDR PX-708A nvatabus Port 0 ID 0 DMA: Off
CdRomPeripheral : TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1212 nvatabus Port 0 ID 1 DMA: Off
DiskPeripheral : ST340810A nvatabus Port 0 ID 2 DMA: Off
DiskPeripheral : WDC WD740GD-00FLA0 nvatabus Port 2 ID 2 DMA: Off
As you can see from the nero log all my devices are shown with the transfer mode DMA as off even though in device manager all are shown with the transfer mode "UDMA 2" or in the case of the hard drives ST340810A has a transfer mode of "UDMA5" and the WDC drive which is a sata drive has its transfer mode set to "Serial ATA DMA". Would anyone have any idea of what is going on here. Is nero actually using PIO transfer mode or is it just bogey information.
In windows xp. Device manager, IDE controllers Primary & Secondary, right click on both and go to properties, advance settings. Look at current transfer mode if it says PIO mode uninstall and reboot. This applies to Primary & Secondary.
In windows xp. Device manager, IDE controllers Primary & Secondary, right click on both and go to properties, advance settings. Look at current transfer mode if it says PIO mode uninstall and reboot. This applies to Primary & Secondary.
This is the weird thing. In device manager none of my drives are shown with the transfer mode of PIO. Both my Plextor burner and my Tosh DVD-Rom drive are shown with the active transfer mode "UDMA 2". So how is the Nero log determining that DMA is OFF.
This is very interesting. I'm pretty sure that there is a registry entry that Nero looks at to make the determination. I don't know where though. I think I'd believe your settings in Device Manager were correct before believing what the Nero log says. You may want to contact Nero support and see what they say. They like to know about this sort of thing.
You can tell if DMA is enabled by your rip times....Well sort of..If you are getting average rip times of 40 minutes or longer I'd say you have a problem. If they are taking less than 20 minutes then your DMA is probably enabled.
What version of windows are you running. That will make a diffrence where you change DMA mode. The instructions I gave where for Windblows XP. In XP your looking at IDE controller (Primary & Secondary). In windblows 98 you change it under the drive proberties.
Also to run in DMA133 it takes a special IDE(133) cable.
I'm using WinXP SP2. I think as fasfrank mentioned I'll contact Nero tech support, they may have heard of this before. The thing is I have heard before of nvidia drivers having compatibility problems with certain applications although I don't think Nero was mentioned. In fact the earlier editions of Plextools Professional(comes with the Plextor burner) had problems running with nvidia IDE drivers. For now I will set the transfer mode to PIO, burn a DVD, then set it back to UDMA2 and do the same burn. If they both take the same time to complete the job I'll know there is a real problem and let Nero tech support take it from there. Thanks guys.
