DMA setting

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 4:28 pm

I've got a CD read drive, and a DVD/CD read/write drive. The former has the DMA flag set, but not the latter. I was told that I shouldn't set the latter, because that could cause massive hardware problems. Does this make sense? Since a DVD install now takes hours rather than minutes, I'd like to change that.

Malta Soron · Post by **Malta Soron** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 5:20 pm

Can you turn it off again? 'Cause then you should just try.

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 5:45 pm

Turn it off again? I want to turn it on. But I'm told that's not a good idea, and could result in hardware problems. I'd rather not turn it on, if this is going to happen.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:39 am

DMA is Direct Memory Access and means that the drive itself can access the memory ... well directly (it is also very common on sound cards, until they started getting their own memory). This can yield a performance benefit, however as you mention it can also cause issues.

If you want to try have turn it on then simply do so if you wish, if it then causes problems, you can turn it off. It should not be able to break anything (permanently at least I'd think

) however you might experience weird system crashes and possible read/write errors, for no apparent reasons.

I've not looked at such settings in years and I never bothered to get myself very familiar with the process of DMA, so I am unsure how much newer hardware actually uses DMA, as most seems to have either their own memory and/or larger buffers. Perhaps other techies can give you further information

(I'm no hardware guy myself

)

Malta Soron · Post by **Malta Soron** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 5:52 am

Xandax wrote:If you want to try have turn it on then simply do so if you wish, if it then causes problems, you can turn it off.

That's what I meant to say.

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 6:50 am

I'll give it a try, then. Thanks to both of you.