LordKaos

Distinguished
Jan 25, 2001
2,017
0
19,780
If the bios detects the drive as being ATA 4 or PIO 4!

ATA 5 - UltraDMA 100
ATA 4 - UltraDMA 66
ATA 3 - UltraDMA 33


Better burn in Hell with some company than freeze in Heaven all alone
 

wingnut144

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
32
0
18,530
But is there any way on the CD drive itself to see what it supports?

How new would a CD drive have to be to support ATA66?
 

Arrow

Splendid
Dec 31, 2007
4,123
0
22,780
To my knowledge, there are no ATA66 CD ROMS right now.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>
 

jvanber

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2001
53
0
18,630
Most controllers will detect what type of drive (PIO mode, etc) is connected to the system, and configures the devices appropriately. For instance, if you hook a CDROM to a UDMA/100 controller, it will see that your cdrom is an ATA/33 device, and use that protocol to communicate with the device. It SHOULD be transparent to you. If you're having problems, try updating your motherboard's BIOS, or your controller's BIOS if available.

Joshua
 
G

Guest

Guest
ATA/UDMA ratings only apply to hard drives, not to CD- or DVD-ROM drives. You can, however, enable DMA transfers for these drives on the Device Manager/Settings page, but that only allows direct transfer of data to the bus, by-passing the CPU. Strictly speaking, although the drives hook up to the IDE channel and cable, the interface is ATAPI. The drive runs at the same speed whether cabled to ATA-33, -66 or -100 channels.