Increase IDE disk Speed

Windows XP doesn't always pick up on the speed settings for your IDE devices. For instance a CD/DVD drive may be listed as PIO while it's fully capable of supporting DMA/UDMA — and every once in a while, as well, these settings for hard drives will not be optimized.

To optimize IDE disk settings:

1. Press the Start button
2. Click on Run
3. Type sysdm.cpl and click OK
4. Click on the "Hardware" tab
5. Press the "Device Manager" button
6. Click on the "" symbol for "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" to expand it
7. Right-click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties"
8. Click on the "Advanced Settings" tab
9. For both Device 0 and Device 1 make sure that it's set to "Auto Detection" in the Device Type field
10. Set the Transfer Mode to "DMA if Available"
11. Click OK
12. Repeat the same thing for the "Secondary IDE Channel"
13. Restart the computer

If those settings are already in place there's no need to optimize any further as it's already as fast as it's going to get. Changing the PIO mode to DMA on optical drives will not enhance speed of the drive itself but will make the system use fewer compute cycles to access the drive as it reads and writes to it.

OS: XP > Tips / Tweaks
Date: 01/15/06

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