Activating DMA on HD and cdroms
 

Hi there!

When trying to write an iso image (for example) to disc, is my computer using all cpu resources and everything runs relatively slow. It's about the same when moving data from one disc to another, and the transfer-rate isn't very good.
I have an idea about the problem is because of the fact that DMA isn't activated.

My question is now - since I'm not that experienced with linux - how do I enable DMA?
I have read some guides about it, but I recieve some errors when trying:

# hdparm -d1 /dev/hdd (my dvdwriter)
/dev/hdd:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma = 0 (off)

It's a result of editing /etc/hdparm.conf
One of my harddrives is a SATA drive, and I have heard that hdparm doesn't support DMA on SATA drives, is that correct?

I'm running Ubuntu kernel 2.6.10-5-386 on a Nforce4 mobo (Asus A8n Sli Deluxe).

Thx in advance
trex_dk

It should work, I'm also using a SATA hard drive for which I had to set the dma setting. If you haven't already follow this guide carefully,

http://ubuntuguide.org/

be sure to scroll down to the section on "Hardware"



peace V