Guys, My dvd burner finally blew out on me after 22 months, which was expected. i probably burned about 50 dvds a month, which is about 1100 dvds burned, at full capacity. My question is, when I install this new burner...is there any way to get this device at a higher DMA setting than ULTRA DMA mode 2? I know that the IDE drives are at ULTRA DMA Mode 5, and i'm wondering if an optical device can be set to that mode. My highest i've ever seen on my PC for my old dvd burner was ultra dma mode 2. That is with 2 hard drives on 1 bus, and the burner set to secondary master on the second bus. any thoughts?

FYI, my specs are Emachines, T3092. AMD 3000+ 1 gig ram (pc2700) 160 internal, 160 external, 50 gig internal (primary slave, ghost drive). CPU - 2.17 Athlon XP (3000+) 333MH bus (main board) 512kb L2 cache

What model is the new burner ? StopBadware

I have never seen an optical drive yet that went higher than DMA 2. There no point in having a high speed interface if the device itself cant make use of it. Which means that optical drives are a lot slower than hard disk, regardless of the DMA mode. Stuart

the Model is a DVD+/-RW SONY DW-Q30A but its really a LITE-ON, sony just bought the rights to rename it, repackage, and reship it.

"I have never seen an optical drive yet that went higher than DMA 2." I was unaware myself until a few weeks back when I was helping someone out with a similar DMA issue. Indeed the DW-Q30A is one of those burners that theoretically has a max supported transfer mode: PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 and Ultra DMA mode 4, according to the manufacturer. Make sure you have an 80 wire IDE cable between your motherboard and DVD drive and also check your I/O transfer setting in the BIOS to make sure it is set appropriately. Lastly if you are comfortable with the registry try to re-enable DMA function. 0. Run REGEDIT. Navigate to key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} 1. It has subkeys like 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Normally 0001 is the primary IDE channel, 0002 the secondary, but other numbers can occur under certain circumstances. You have to go through these subkeys and check the DriverDesc value until you find the proper IDE channel. 2. Delete MasterIdDataChecksum and SlaveIdDataChecksum, exit and reboot. 3. The drive DMA capabilities will be redetected. FYI: For 48X reading on that drive, you'll have to keep the eject button pressed for a few seconds, until the activation led blinks twice, in order for the drive to set the 48X reading speed. You'll need to do this each and every time you open and close the tray, otherwise it reverts back to 40X http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=15850&PageId=0 StopBadware

wow, this is great news and a great find. thanks a lot, will try it when it gets delivered.