Legacy question: IDE HDD only connecting at UDMA mode 2, should be faster

[waylo]

I have an older Core2Duo system running as a HTPC. The motherboard is an ASRock G31M-GS. (It was the only motherboard available that could accept my C2D E6600 and DDR2 RAM when the older mobo broke--as the HTPC did everything I needed to, I saw no need to upgrade). It's been running 24/7 for years and seems to be doing quite well.

I recently discovered that one of my HDDs, a strangely reliable Seagate ST3320620A, 320gb IDE drive, with 73000 hours!, only connects at UDMA mode 2, when it is fully capable of UDMA 5. It may have been that way all this time.

I checked the IDE cable and confirmed it is an 80pin cable, even replacing it.

I went into the BIOS and found these options listed under DMA mode:
http://imgur.com/a/McJIN

There is no listing > UDMA2. Does this mean this board can't support anything higher?

 

[atljsf]

the old ide only offers around 20 megabytes per second in reality, maximum 40 megabytes reading on ideal situations, mostly will be less, good for windows xp and nothing more

don't blame old pata cables and ports, neither hard disk, old and slow

get rid of it and jump to sata speeds, that g31 surely has at least 2 sata ports at sata II speeds minimum

the pata hard disks looks nice when disassembled and put in the wall, looks nice as clocks

 

[waylo]

Thanks, lol, a repurposed clock might be the only use for these old school IDE drives.

The G31 does have some SATA ports and I do have many SATA drives attached as such.

I'm not sweating the slower speed too much, just curious as to why it isn't living up to its very outdated potential.

 

[atljsf]

there was a time where you needed a special 80 lines pata cable, a properly jumped hard disk and a driver and also a bios setting to make all things work, supposedly to reach the whopping speed of 60 megabytes per second!

i had many of those, many mainboard and many cables and very few managed to pass over 40 megabytes per second read

pata was a pita!

look how beaty things can be