How To Set Drive Transfer Mode To DMA

If you are experiencing bad performance from your cd/dvd drives, it may due to PIO transfer mode. Programmed input/output (PIO) is the method of data transferring between computer CPU and any of the network adapters or ATA storage device such as hard disk. CPU has direct contribution in this data transfer mode, so the speed of transferring information is slow comparable to DMA.



Direct memory access (DMA) uses a chip which is included in the external drive which actually help the computer to organize and arrange data transfer. So the process is much faster than PIO mode. In DMA  mode reading and writing of data is done independently of cpu.

Normally the transfer mode is set to DMA by windows default. In certain conditions, if you force to read a scratched cd or dvd the drive is automatically set to PIO mode to prevent errors. If you want to set the ATA device like CD drive to DMA mode again, follow the below steps. For a cd/dvd drive:

1. Identify your drive IDE channel from the BIOS setup.
2. Go to control panel and open System properties select hardware tab.
3. Open device manager and expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
4. Select the IDE channel, right click and select properties click advanced settings tab.
5. Here you can view the current transfer mode of your drive.

To revert PIO to DMA:

1. Click driver tab then click uninstall
2. After uninstall is complete, restart your system, windows will re install the hardware so the transfer mode will again set to DMA.

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