[Troy]

In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device....
now because its your boot drive I'm not sure you can do this and still boot up...but you want to try...make sure plug and play is enabled in the bios first...

Yes happyrck I already tried uninstalling, I read somewhere else that I can do this and Windows will just reinstall it on start up again. I mentioned this and the results in post 28. After doing that, I then changed my external drive and posted those results. So it seems you're saying that not only does the drive produce errors in DMA and revert to PIO mode, it's stuck on the SLOWEST PIO mode at that? Oh man that's annoying...

It's the weekend, I emailed Samsung late Friday afternoon and received an email reply very quickly saying that my message had been passed on to a hard drive technician, so I have a feeling it might not be for another 3-4 working days, so maybe by Thursday? It's alright, I have patience...

Okay The Skeptic, I'll try doing that with the paging file right now. I know that currently it is set at 1.5x my RAM, but not the maximum at double. It's worth a try.

Thanks heaps for your replies, I really appreciate it. If you are reading this thread and have an idea, feel free to post, saying "I have an idea"...

[Advertisements]

I am looking back at the error reports that you quoted in a previous post and I see that two of them are related to page files.

What I would try to do is force page files to be deleted by canceling space for them and then create a new space .

Try the following: Advanced in System in control Panel. Settings in performance > Advanced > virtual memory > change. Choose no paging file > set > ok > ok.

After you chose No Paging File return to the same menu and chose Custom Size. Set the initial size to about 1.5 times the volume of your ram and set Maximum Size to double of the Initial Size. Click Set > ok >ok

Reboot after each step. Loading time after the first step may be long and the computer may slow up considerably.

Okay I just did all of these steps, rebooting after each as you said. I have 1GB of RAM, so in the final section I set the first bit to 1536MB and the max to 2048MB. Does that sound right to you? Anyway, I rebooted and still get the same results with the hard drive, but my guess is we can rule that out now...

[Troy]

I am looking back at the error reports that you quoted in a previous post and I see that two of them are related to page files.

What I would try to do is force page files to be deleted by canceling space for them and then create a new space .

Try the following: Advanced in System in control Panel. Settings in performance > Advanced > virtual memory > change. Choose no paging file > set > ok > ok.

After you chose No Paging File return to the same menu and chose Custom Size. Set the initial size to about 1.5 times the volume of your ram and set Maximum Size to double of the Initial Size. Click Set > ok >ok

Reboot after each step. Loading time after the first step may be long and the computer may slow up considerably.

Okay I just did all of these steps, rebooting after each as you said. I have 1GB of RAM, so in the final section I set the first bit to 1536MB and the max to 2048MB. Does that sound right to you? Anyway, I rebooted and still get the same results with the hard drive, but my guess is we can rule that out now...

[happyrock]

ya... on those error reports..this is what M$ says

Details
Product: Windows Operating System
ID: 51
Source: disk

Symbolic Name: IO_WARNING_PAGING_FAILURE
Message: An error was detected on device %1 during a paging operation.

Explanation...An input/output (I/O) request to a memory-mapped file failed and the operation was retried.

User Action

If these events are logged regularly on a primary system drive, replace the device. Otherwise, no user action is required.

the other event id # says to get a firmware update but samsung is telling you they don't do that...
my money is on a bad hard drive

[Troy]

Okay, here's the link to my motherboard drivers. Which ones do you suggest I reinstall to test? I'm having a guess here - shall I try to use RAID on the motherboard? I can change it from "native" mode to raid mode in the BIOS, which would then bring up the "found new hardware" wizard, and just have them as JBOD? Or would I need to completely reinstall XP with these RAID drivers on a floppy to achieve this?

Okay the link doesn't work properly, you need to select: Motherboard, then second menu select Socket775 and then in the third menu select P5S800-VM, it's about halfway down. My OS is XP.

[happyrock]

RAID is only used if you have 2 or more identical drives...stripping (0=speed)...mirroring..(1=safety)..or the dozen or so other flavors ...I would get all your drivers and burn them to a cd for sometime down the road when you need them and maybe don't have easy access to the internet...
its your chipset drivers that I would focus on...

[Troy]

Yes I know about RAID, but wasn't sure about JBOD... I do have a driver cd already though, I have recommended that to quite a few people in this forum! I suppose I'm a bit technically unsure of the terms here, but which ones would constitute "chipset" drivers?

Anyway, here's the response from Samsung (remember this is an e-mail, read it backwards):

Dear Troy,
Please see the email below from a technician from Samsung.
It is impossible to change to DMA mode in the drive level because it is SATA drive.

Kind regards
Victor CHEN
QQ Digital Service Pty Ltd
(Samsung Warranty Centre)
OMS Division
Unit 1/5 Gunya Street, Regents Park, NSW 2143
Tell: 1300 786 341
Fax: 02 9738 1311
Email: [email protected]

________________________________________
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 5:27 PM
To: Victor Chen
Subject: Re: FW: Samsung Hard Drive Query


Hello Victor,

HD300LJ is one of SATA products.
So It's imposible to change the DMA mode in the drive level.
Thanks.



------- Original Message -------
Sender : Victor Chen<[email protected]>
Date : 2007-07-13 15:42
Title : FW: Samsung Hard Drive Query

Dear Jany,
Can you help to instruct this customer to change to DMA mode of this drive HD300LJ?

Kind regards
Victor CHEN
QQ Digital Service Pty Ltd
(Samsung Warranty Centre)
OMS Division
Unit 1/5 Gunya Street, Regents Park, NSW 2143
Tell: 1300 786 341
Fax: 02 9738 1311
Email: [email protected]

Notice how they have carefully removed any contact details for "Jany", so I can only deal through Victor Chen... I'm not happy with this answer, though, so I'm guessing I'll write back and tell them I have little choice but to RMA it then.

[Troy]

My reply to their response:

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the reply. I am very unhappy with the answer from Jany. In the response it says “in the drive level”, so what other level is there? If there is nothing else, then why was that mentioned? If there is another “level”, what is this and how could I setup this other level to extract satisfactory performance? I also have a Western Digital hard drive in my system that does not have this problem. The Western Digital is also a SATA drive. Unfortunately, the Samsung drive is currently my boot drive with Windows XP installed on it, but because the drive is stuck in PIO mode, the performance is severely limited. I am going to wipe my installation on the Samsung and reinstall everything on the Western Digital drive. It seems I will be left with no choice but to RMA the Samsung drive if I cannot get satisfactory performance from it. Please can I have a better explanation?

Many thanks in advance,
Troy

[Troy]

To Jany, thank you very much for your reply. I understand the picture you have sent to me perfectly, despite the fact I can’t read Korean. On the top under Device 0 it is saying to use DMA (if available) in what mode to use, and the current mode being used is Ultra DMA mode 5. This is what I want my Samsung hard drive to do, but my drive is currently stuck in PIO mode and, like I have written previously, performance is limited. If I could have mine in Ultra DMA mode 5 like yours, I would be very happy. My second hard drive, which is made by Western Digital, is in Ultra DMA mode 6 – this drive has very similar specifications and should be about the same in performance between the two, give or take a little bit. Thus I believe the problem to be with the Samsung hard drive and not anything else in my system. After much searching the Microsoft website and asking for help on the forums I have mentioned previously, we have found a statement from Microsoft that says (for my problem) that there needs to be a firmware update for my hard drive. But in my user manual it says Samsung does not release firmwares for my hard drive, so I am stuck and inclined to think my hard drive is unable to perform at its advertised potential, and thus, faulty.

Here is a picture from my Device Manager showing the same page as yours, but you can see that while it is saying to use DMA mode if available, it is using PIO mode. Nothing I have tried can change that.



I have saved it in 16-colour mode to save on mail size as it was too big before. Please can I have some more information on what I can do to get the best performance from my Samsung hard drive. I really appreciate your replies so far. Thanks for your time.
Troy

p.s. the link to the forums, if you want to read through and see what has been tried already, is http://www.geekstogo...ds-t163564.html

---------------------------

Dear Troy,

I'm also using a SATA drive which supports 3.0Gbps.
But, my system(AMI BIOS) has recognized it as UDMA mode 5 automatically. (see below picture)
And, it can not be allowed changing the data-transfer mode. This is why I answered before.
Thank you.

Sincerely
Jany

(Sorry, I'm a korean. so I'm using Win XP korean version)

(and a picture here of his saying DMA mode 5)



------- Original Message -------

Sender : Victor Chen<[email protected]>
Date : 2007-07-16 13:34
Title : FW: FW: Samsung Hard Drive Query



Dear Jany,

Please see below email from that customer.
Kind regards
Victor CHEN
QQ Digital Service Pty Ltd
(Samsung Warranty Centre)
OMS Division
Unit 1/5 Gunya Street, Regents Park, NSW 2143
Tell: 1300 786 341
Fax: 02 9738 1311
Email: [email protected]

Edited by ruthandtroy, 16 July 2007 - 05:23 PM.

[Troy]

Alright if anyone's still watching this thread, I just got an email from Jany again today linking me to this website. What do you think, shall I ask MS for that hotfix and then work through the registry like it says?

[Troy]

Okay, I worked through that link and found out that you only need the hotfix if you DON'T have SP2. I do have SP2, so I was a bit worried I was at square one again, but then I worked through the registry information at the bottom and added those DWORD values. After two reboots, I have this:

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HD300LJ Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 26.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 55.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 45.2 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.4 ms
Burst Rate : 85.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.1%

This has been one huge learning exercise for me. I still need to know, though, why the errors occurred in the first place that forced the hard drive into PIO mode. It only happens because of errors, so what were they? Any ideas? If it happens again, I won't be impressed...

[The Skeptic]

Congratulations for the fix. The question that comes out of course is why the problem occured in the first place. I read the interesting microsoft article and it seems that their solution is to circumvent the problem by reducing the sensitivity of the system from 6 cummulative to 6 consecutive CRC or time-out errors. That, of course, does not solve the basic problem of why the errors were created in the first place. Anyway, it seems that the problem is well known, known enough for microsoft to write the hot fix. I hope this will end the present problem.

Thanks for letting us know.

[Troy]

Yeah it is good. I wasn't happy with your earlier suggestions that I should just leave it... No offence, but it's the kind of person I am. I want to get the best and have it running the best... The funny thing is I cannot believe how much quicker my system is running. It's amazing. My backups are heaps faster now, too, because it doesn't have the "outgoing" limit. What used to take 1 hour + finished in less than 10 minutes... My bootup times are consistently fast...

Oh, and get this. I thought, because my motherboard is a couple of years old, that my onboard audio was dying. I was getting scratchy sound, particularly noticable when logging in to Windows. And the odd blue screen with my audio driver as the culprit everytime. I managed to eventually find an updated driver (from Realtek website, not ASUS), but it still didn't fix it. NOW THIS IS FIXED ALSO...

This is awesome, I'm so happy!
Okay goodnight, cheers once again!!!

[happyrock]

I'm with the skeptic on this part...

does not solve the basic problem of why the errors were created in the first place

.
I'd keep a eye on that drive...stay up to date on your backups...

Edited by happyrck, 20 July 2007 - 07:10 AM.

[Troy]

Yeah, that's why I mentioned it... This is spooky... I have checked under Device Manager every time I start this computer up!

So far so good, though...
And I've got plenty of backups!

Thanks for your help, really appreciate it.

[happyrock]

your welcome...and thanks for letting us know...