asked on

Enable DMA on more than 1 device

I have enabled the DMA option on my HD and my cd-rom, everything seem to be okay so far. I was just wondering if this could hurt my system, like hardware or memory.?? I also have a writer but I don't think I will enable the DMA option. any comments?

sandman97289

jay00, it depends on what HD you have and which cd-rom drive you have. Some HDs don't support DMA, when this is enabled it can cause data loss or corruption, in some cases a hard disk crash can even occur. However you don't have to usually worry about this if your hard disk is a 4.3Gb or higher since most of them after the 4.3Gb and including it support DMA.

However for your writer it's best if you disable DMA on your hard disk to ensure best results while writting. To check more about your writer and which settings would be the best for writing go to www.cdmediaworld.com and check out their tips. Hope this helps :-)

jay00

ASKER

Both my HD and cd-rom drive are quite new. HD-seagate 8.6 and cd-rom drive-infra48x. I've been running my HD in DMA mode for weeks now and i never get data corrupted, but I just turned DMA mode on my cd-rom yesterday. Could I get data curruption on my Cd-rom? I'm not going to be running my writer on DMA.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

sandman97289

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

jay00

ASKER

so as in compatibility issue. it's okay to turn on DMA on my HD and cd-rom? Thanks

sandman97289

Yes it's fine, you shouldn't have any problems. No problem.