I have an Asus A7V-E m/b which states in the manual that it provides ATA-100 support. From browsing the web, this appears to be Ultra DMA mode 5, yet the motherboard manual also states that in the Bios the only options for DMA settings are Disabled, 1, 2, 3 or 4.....

I am just about to buy a new HDD which is ATA-133 (mode 6?) presumably I will have to run this in mode 4....?

Is it a mistake that the manual says the m/b supports ATA-100 yet only gives up to DMA mode 4 (ATA-66) as an option, or have I got my wires crossed as usual?

Thanks in advance.

Well you aren't wrong. In practice ATA66 and DMA 4 are the same thing, as are ATA100 and DMA 5. All drives are DMA these days. (I'm tempted to start talking about PIO and the old days but I'll restrain myself )

So Asus are wrong because either the board supports ATA 100 & DMA 5 or it supports neither. I'm not familiar with the board and I can't find it listed on their site. But it is a good few years since ATA 100 came in as standard so unless this is an old board that you've dug up from somewhere, I think that I'd be confident that it does support ATA 100.

If it does your 133 drive should be fine. But will only run at 100 of course. In practice you'll not notice the difference. Just leave the BIOS to auto detect the drive.

ASUS A7VE Mother Board

Cheers guys. I think I may contact Asus technical support. If you are keen here is a link to the m/b book (pdf)

http://www.asuscom.de/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt...-e/a7ve-101.pdf

On page 30 it talks about plugging in an UltraDMA/100 IDE HDD, but on page 50 it shows the Ultra DMA mode settings which are only Disabled, 1, 2, 3 or 4, and 4 is only UltraDMA 66 right?

I appreciate anyone who bothers downloading and checking these pages!

thanks again,

Rick

Think this about sums it up........ http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref.../modesUDMA.html

Bit of light reading for you 'Hopper, lol.

Gee thanks Steve! lol

Rick, I'm not going to download the manual but I'm sure you are right. As people know I'm a bit of a fan of ASUS boards but if I had a pound for everytime I found a mistake in their manuals.............. (probably happens when they translate them from taiwanese or whatever )

Best of luck with their tech support!

I note Ben's link also says that the board supports ATA 100 so I'd be amazed if it doesn't. The chipset supports 133 FSB Athlons so it would be pretty strange if a board of that age only had an ATA 66 IDE interface.

Lol 'Hopper,

From my experience of Asus boards, when there has been a change of spec, they put a scroppy piece of paper detailing the changes in with the manual, it is very easy to loose duh