My sister has a Dell computer. She has a Sony DVD writer and a Liteon DVD writer installed. One is the Master. The other is the Slave. The DVD Writer that is the slave is very, very slow. I tried switching DVD writers around. Both DVD writers are perfectly fine. It doesn't matter if the Sony is the slave or the Liteon is the slave. Which ever is the slave runs very, very, slow. I'm not sure if I'm on the correct forum, but I would Appreciate any help in this matter. Does anyone know what the problem could be? Thank you
1)Have you replaced the cable? (less likely) 2)Have you checked to ensure that both Master and slave are set to DMA (if available). (more likely)
Yes to the cable. I have not checked to see if both are on DMA. I will check tomorrow and I will let you know if it helps. Thank you for answering.
HP told me to go to the Hardware and click on the "IDE Primary and Secondary" to make sure the DMA is enabled. But, on my sister's DELL she has a "Primary, another Primary, and a Secondary." The two "Primaries" say the DMA is enabled, but the "Secondary" says it is "not applicable". I don't know why she has two primaries. I'm not a computer genius, maybe this is normal. But I don't know what to do now. Is there anything you can add to help?
First primary is the HDD Second Primary is the first optical device (master) Secondary is the second optical device. If it says "not applicable" then the I/O type is not settable. You may need to go into the BIOS setting to see if the devioce is being recognized correctly. I think we've found the problem, now we need to find a solution.
It is a Dell Dimension E510 model DM051 I already tried putting both the drives on cable select. It changed nothing. Thank you for answering. Is there anything else?
Props to grampyga for finding this: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/769553 This might be the problem. Since I am having the same issue with my system, I'll try it later tonight and let you know. --------------------- Updated --------------------- Yep, that did it. I uninstalled the drives first and that didn't change it. I then went in and uninstalled the IDE controller that was showing the DVD-ROM as PIO mode. Upon rebooting, the drive came back up as DMA mode. I will do some drive testing to see if it stays in DMA mode. If it drops out again, I'll try swapping the cable, and if that's not it, I'll assume that the drive is dying.
