I have Seagate Barracuda V (60GB) and Seagate U5 (40GB) connected to HPT 370 card (PCI)
RedHat 9.0

dmesg
----------------------------------
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
HPT370: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:12.0
PCI: Enabling device 00:12.0 (0005 -> 0007)
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:12.0
HPT370: chipset revision 3
HPT370: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
HPT37X: using 33MHz PCI clock
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xe800-0xe807, BIOS settings: hde:DMA, hdf:DMA
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xe808-0xe80f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
hda: CD-540E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hde: ST360021A, ATA DISK drive
hdf: ST340810A, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03ce8a8, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
blk: queue c03ce9ec, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide2 at 0xd800-0xd807,0xdc02 on irq 11
hde: attached ide-disk driver.
hde: host protected area => 1
hde: 117231408 sectors (60022 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=116301/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdf: attached ide-disk driver.
hdf: host protected area => 1
hdf: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=77545/16/63, UDMA(100)
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hde:<4>hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x61
hde: 0 bytes in FIFO
hde: timeout waiting for DMA
hde: error waiting for DMA
hde: dma timeout retry: status=0x80 { Busy }

hde: DMA disabled
hdf: DMA disabled
ide2: reset: success
blk: queue c03ce8a8, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hde1 hde2 hde3 hde4 <<4>hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hde: 0 bytes in FIFO
hde: timeout waiting for DMA
hde: error waiting for DMA
hde: dma timeout retry: status=0x80 { Busy }

hde: DMA disabled
ide2: reset: success
hde5<4>hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hde: 0 bytes in FIFO
hde: timeout waiting for DMA
hde: error waiting for DMA
hde: dma timeout retry: status=0x80 { Busy }

hde: DMA disabled
ide2: reset: success
hde6 >
hdf: [PTBL] [4865/255/63] hdf1 hdf2 < hdf5 >
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 145k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hde: 0 bytes in FIFO
hde: timeout waiting for DMA
hde: error waiting for DMA
hde: dma timeout retry: status=0x80 { Busy }

hde: DMA disabled
ide2: reset: success
-----------------------------------------
Why i can't activate DMA ? Mannually i tried hdparm -d1 /dev/hde but it doesn't work

On Red Hat 8.0 it was alright, no problems. I had 40MB/s transfer, now i have about 3MB/s

What is wrong ??

Thnx

try a slower dma mode.
hdparm -d1 -X68 /dev/hde
you can try from about 64-70.
experiment and find the fastest that will work.

Still this same problem
hdparm show: using_dma=0 (off) after changes

use the redhat 8 kernel, if you know how to set that up.

Try flashing the BIOS