DMA randomly shuts itself off
 

I have two optical drives installed, one CD-Rom and one DVD-Rom.
The CD drive is /dev/hda/ while the DVD drive is /dev/hdb/. I have had the ongoing problem of DMA turning itself off randomly for the DVD drive. I am have not a clue how to fix this, and it's not too big of a deal as I can just turn it back on through a terminal, but randomly it will be off when I burn a disc and it will bog down the system horribly while the media is being written.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Brandon

Check for firmware updates for both the CD and DVD devices, also check for a system BIOS upgrade from the manufacturer also and install as needed.

Meanwhile you could make a little tiny script and put it in the hourly cron folder, or even in another more frequent cron folder, like half-hourly, and simply have it apply the hdparm setting to the drive which turns DMA on.
Check 'man hdparm' for details.