Which mode PIO or DMA?

[trekkerj]

I've got XP and a Panasonic burner. Should I be using PIO Only mode or DMA in the secondary ide settings in device manager?

[sarahjh69]

its unlikely XP will let u use DMA mode with any cd/dvd rom

in XP my pioneer 104 burner would only work in PIO mode.
DMA works perfectly in winME with a 104 burner
I put all my pcs back to winME.

XP would not run my liteon 163 dvd rom in dma mode either.
reading a divx cd in xp gave 100% cpu usage and skips
in winME it went down to 30% cpu usage....no skips

xp is garbage!

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by sarahjh69
its unlikely XP will let u use DMA mode with any cd/dvd rom


:scared: please dont think ALL winxp users must have your problems.

[theReal]

AFAIK WinXP and Win2k will not force DMA (like Win9x and ME do) for all devices. XP and Win2k only enable DMA for devices that really support it and have good enough cables.

If you can enable DMA, do it, it's much better than PIO (much less cpu usage and better burst transfer-speeds).
Sometimes you have to enable DMA for CDRoms in BIOS to make it work, and/or you have to change the setup a little (put the cdroms on IDE 1 instead of IDE 2 or something like that).

I've heard that not all burners like DMA, so there might be cases where you just can't enable it.

[dvdsubber]

I got the Liteon 165, dvr228 from philips, one Western digital, and two IBM HDS. ALL running at their highest setting DMA possible..


oh, and I am using XP pro. DMA is much better then PIO, and SHOULD be less CPU exhausting.