Little-Known Tweak to Boost Hard Drive Performance!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Note: Be sure to see my follow-up<\/a> article about the traffic I got for this post from digg.com.<\/p>\n The So, how did However, there is a setting to If you How to Force UltraDMA-6<\/strong><\/p>\n Let me know about your experiences with this tweak.<\/p>\n Don’t forget to digg<\/a> this article!<\/p>\n
\nspeed at which your hard drive transfers data is very important, right?
\nEspecially if you need to copy a 20-gigabyte file, like I did. My
\nlaptop was initially copying the file at 2 MB\/s because it was
\ntransferring in PIO-only mode, which would have taken almost three
\nhours. Not only is PIO terribly slow, it consumes lots of CPU power.
\nWhile copying that 20-gigabyte file, my CPU usage stayed at 100%.
\nTherefore, I tried to figure out the best way to increase the transfer
\nrate. I changed the transfer mode to UltraDMA-6, speeding it up by 600%
\nto 12 MB\/s, and the 20-gigabyte file copied in a little over 30
\nminutes. Plus, my CPU usage was only about 20-30%.<\/p>\n
\nthe drive get lowered from UltraDMA to PIO-only mode in the first
\nplace? Well, because Windows has a particularly dumb way of handling
\ntransfer modes for storage devices. After six cumulative (all-time
\ntotal) errors while reading or writing a storage device, Windows will
\nautomatically lower its transfer mode. Worse, it never goes back up
\nunless you reinstall the device. This is bad if you put in a scratched
\nCD, causing those six-in-a-lifetime errors happen all at once. Even
\nyour hard drive will experience an occasional hiccup, so eventually its
\ntransfer rate is not safe either.<\/p>\n
\nforce Windows to only lower the transfer rate after six consecutive (in
\na row) errors, and then raise it back up when the errors stop.
\nTherefore, you can keep your drives in UltraDMA-6 mode.<\/p>\n
\nwould like to try changing the transfer mode for your drives, follow
\nthe instructions below. Going from PIO-only mode to UltraDMA-6 will
\nshow you the most significant performance boost. However, your results
\nmay vary. Of course, your drive and motherboard must support
\nUltraDMA-6, or you won’t see much of a difference. Be careful while you
\nare doing this; I am not responsible for any mistakes you make. Please
\nback up your registry first in case something goes wrong!
<\/strong>
How to Check Current Transfer Mode<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\nto the Advanced Settings tab to see the current transfer modes. If you
\nsee anything besides UltraDMA-6, and especially if you see PIO Mode,
\nthen follow the steps below.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
\nare several sub-keys under this one, such as 0000, 0001, etc. You are
\ninterested in two of them that say Primary IDE Channel and Secondary
\nIDE Channel.<\/li>\n\n
\nany attributes named MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This
\nresets the tracking for errors that Windows uses to determine when the
\ntransfer mode should be lowered.<\/li>\n
\nResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and a DWORD value of 1. This tells Windows
\nthat it should lower the transfer mode when there are six consecutive
\nerrors instead of six cumulative errors.<\/li>\n
\nfollowing keys to a hexadecimal value of ffffffff (eight F’s). This
\nwill change the transfer modes to UltraDMA-6:<\/li>\n\n