Well, that's the question.

When i start up mandrake or even Knoppix, in the initial gobbledegook it spits out on startup, i see a blurb about it now knowing about the hard drive program mode so it "assumes it is 33. will set later" or something to that effect.

so i got to wondering, does linux actually use my new hard drive's UltraDMA 133 capabilities? What is the right way to tell? is it adjustable from within linux?

i notice that, for instance, Mozilla starts up faster in WindowsXP than in Linux on equivilent hardware. Others linux converts i've made over the last year have made comments to the effect that linux is slower to open run apps than windows is.

i have a maxtor 80GB DiamondMax+ w/ 8MB buffer running on MDK9.1, but the specifics are not too important.

thanks for the advice

/sbin/hdparm -d /dev/hd(x)
it will say either
using_dma = 1
or..
using_dma = 0
so if it is 0 you can use this:
/sbin/hdparm -d1 /dev/hd(x)
to set it to on.
after a reboot this will probably go back to "0" so to get around this, add that line to enable dma to your rc.* file ..

ps -> (x) <- i am sure you can see that you have to replace this with the proper drive letter

yup, says here it's on.

thanks for the quick reply. much appreciated