Its most likely the DMA issue. I've had this same problem b4. Although in my case the solution was a new PATA cable for my drive. i.e. the drive slows down to PIO mode. Which is a little tricky to fix in a laptop. At least at the lamen lvl. Also, ur hardware settings shouldn't just say "DMA if available" it should actually specify the transfer mode. If it doesn't, u may be looking at the wrong port.

Good Luck - this was a real pain for me to fix (at least to work out the cause of the problem anyway) *shudder*