Yes I installed that driver to no avail.

@ eds. Just read through the whole thread and I am still not sure but it makes me suspect the Secondary IDE controller or the drive. Don't know how much you mess with computers but just to give it a try, and this is not a recommended set up, Set the jumper on the drive to slave and intsall it as Primary slave to your hard drive(Just to see if it goes UDMA) as you stated earlier your HD is UDMA 6. After you switch the drive and reboot, Go to the Device manager, right click on MY Computer and click scan for hardware changes. I know it sounds like a lot of work but you might say it's a step in troubleshooting. Up to you.
Also have a look at the Secondary IDE plug in on the Mobo and see if there are any bent or loose pins. I just guessing here.
BTW is this a Home Built Machine ??

Eds sound like a problem with your via controller, I have seen it on some dvd writers and motherboards with via. Best bet is to get this board and install in one of your pci slots and connect your 716 to it..i have my 716 connected to it and get dma4 no problem..plus it gives you 4 extra drive connections
http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...923&pfp=BROWSE

also like stated above make sure you do not have any bent or pushed in pins on the back of your Plextor..mine has one that was pushed in causing issues had to use tweasers to pull it back out.

@crossg, eds mentioned in the first post that he built the machine.

@Jamos, i'm running both my PX-716As off the IDE channels on my Via K8T800 Pro mobo in UDMA 4 w/no problems...i just don't think it's a hardware problem but rather a driver/software issue/conflict.

@drpino, Can't believe I missed that as I just read through the whole post. I am with you in thinking it's software. Built some AMD's 2 with VIA and 2 NForce chipsets and it is a challenge sometimes especially with the IDE drivers. Why I asked him to swap to the primary channel is just to get the drive and loose/bent pins out of the question. Don't know if his board will do the same as mine but he may be able to use his southbridge in IDE mode or he may require drivers and that won't work, don't know.
Just going back to basics, I like you always got the drives into UDMA but not before a whole lot of WTF were they thinking!!

I'm with your earlier post crossq. I believe it’s not the Plextor and I am shying away from it being software. I believe it’s the motherboard/ IDE plug. I think this board's second IDE port does not support UDMA (i've seen all the pins and they look fine).

One reason I think this is cause I went into the BIOS and (just for laughs) disabled the “automatically detect DMA” for my Primary IDE device and went back into windows. My hard drives went to Multi-World DMA2. I went back into BIOS and enabled “automatically detect DMA” for Primary IDE and hard drives were back at UDMA6. I did the same for the second IDE and nothing changed in my settings.

The ECS board (PM800-M2) is either defective or simply cannot run UDMA mode in Second IDE. One option I was thinking of was having this config:

PRIMARY IDE

Master: Hard drive
Slave: Plextor

SECOND IDE

Master: Harddrive
Slave: NEC drive

What do you think?

thanks for the info James -- seriously considering a new board.

Well before you switch every thing around I think it would be an idea to put the Plex on the Primary as slave and see if there is any difference. This is just food for thought. I have my two IDE hard drives on my south bridge (Raid) controller in S ATA IDE mode so the act like normal hard drives, my other HD is S ATA so it goes right to my Northbridge S ATA controller and that leaves me with 4 free IDE Channels for my Optical drives, so there is probably a combination there that we could get to work for you. It's late here so I will google your Mobo later and see if I can think of anything that might work. They don't recommend putting HD and optical drives on the same IDE strap or so I hear and that may be with older computers.
If you do get a new board Please don't get a VIA chipset!!! J/Kidding

ECS mobos aren't reknowned for being high quality (from what i've read). i think it might just be your secondary IDE channel too from what you just posted. perhaps removing all IDE devices except your boot HD and making the Plex the Primary Master and the HD the Secondary Master would allow us to figure out if it is indeed your secondary IDE channel at fault here.

man, i'm 0 for 2 with hardware config issues over the last few days...i feel like a noob

Problem solved!!! I think...

Here's what I did -- moved my hard drive from Primary IDE to Secondary and detached both Plextor and NEC drives. Booted windows xp. In device manager, the hard drives in the SECONDARY IDE channel showed UDMA6. Huh. So it's not the Secondary IDE. Shutdown, connected Plex to the PRIMARY IDE, booted up and sure enough, device manager showed Plex as UDMA4. This seems to solve my problem -- don't ask me how.

Question is -- can I keep this config without damaging my hard drive and/or dvd drives? Will I expierence drive problems or software problems? If not I think I'm gonna keep this configuration cause everything seems fine.

If I understand you correctly your set-up is now:

IDE 1 MASTER: HDD1
IDE 1 SLAVE: Plextor drive

IDE 2 MASTER: HDD2
IDE 2 SLAVE: Nec drive

If this is the case then I see no problems with it really. But, when burning something I would make sure that the drive and HDD are not on the same channel (because you will have problems with the transfer rate, not a huge problem but it will result in buffer underruns). So, for example; if you want to burn something with your Plextor make sure the source data is on HDD2 and vice versa, when you want to burn with your Nec drive make sure the source data is on HDD 1.

Hope that makes sense

Ps. Nice work in this thread people. I love it when everyone tries to help out, makes me proud of our members

G@M3FR3@K - Actually set up is now:

Primary:

Master: Plextor
Slave: NEC

Secondary:

Master: Harddrive
Slave: Harddrive

And you're right -- I owe a debt of gratitude to all who helped me out. Great to be here. Thanks.

Hmm so both drives are on the Secondary IDE channel.. I didn't know that would actually work. I don't know enough of hardware set-ups but if it works, it works. Maybe someone else with more knowledge on this subject can inform us some more?

I learned to hook up 2 hdds on the same channel as the primary.
The bootable as master, 2nd as slave.
Also it doesn' matter if the 2 hdds are on the secondary, if it works it's OK.
There's only a problem with the hdd if i use a older drive with it on same
channel cause it could increases the performance of the hdd.
The theory logical said there shouldn't be any problems with damages on
the drives, in this case!

eds. Great to hear!! I don't think you will have problems with the config you have. But I am now really confused. This has convinced me that Windows has a mind of it's own. In theory you should be able to have the original set up work too. Hmmm?? Maybe there was a pushed in pin / cold short or something that was hard to see. It's working and that's great, I would leave everything as you have it now. Looking forward to seeing some scans.

eds, nice that you managed to solve your problem!
This thread seems to deal with the config of WinXP, which apparently shows the exact UDMA mode the drives are in. In Win2k SP4, the device manager only tells me both my HD and PX 716A are in "Ultra-DMA" mode without further specification (2/4/6). Is there any way to find out the exact mode? Everything works fine here, I'm just curious. I have a VIA chipset with the latest Via 4in1 drivers.

@sTisTi. You could try downloading Sisoft Sandra or PC Wizard @ www.cpuid.com either one will normally tell you what UDMA your drives are in, or you may be able to look in your BIOS under IDE Drives.

@crossg: Thanks, I'll have a look at the programs you mentioned. My BIOS doesn't show it AFAIK (I have a MSI K8N Neo board).

congrats eds!!! you current config sounds just fine to me. happy burning and like crossg said, let's see some scans now!

@sTisTi, you could also use something like Everest from Lavalys (this used to be AIDA32): http://www.lavalys.com/products/over...ng=en&pageid=1

Not all via controllers/motherboards are the same my man, and it does look like a motherboard issue if the drive only works udma on primary channel. his mboard is a ECS PM800-M2 motherboard somewhat different than yours.

sounds like a squirly motherboard..have seen this with various manufacturers and yes they use via controllers..its more of a issue of how the motherboard bios interacts with them.

but, should be ok running your harddrives on secondary (xp doesnt care) just make sure they are running udma 6 if they are ata 133 or udma 5 if they are ata100 harddrives.

but my solution would still work for you eds a secondary ide card is a great addon if you want to free up your motherboards ide controllers for harddrives..etc.

true about the Via chipsets/mobo combinations. well, at least he got it sorted.

[off topic]For those who wanna try. There were recently released new VIA IDE accelarator drivers. 1.21 beta. [/off topic]

would love to do this, but I have no more PCI slots on this board.

Here you go guys --

The scan is of a burn using my Plextor with TDK -R 8x stock. Burn took only 7 mins. It played well on dvd player.

Question -- I believe this scan looks good, but a Q-Check Test shows this disk as bad across the board. What's that about?

well within limits (i.e. <280 PIE) but the errors are a little dense (i've noticed my -R burns are like that too). what was the total number of errors? how does the sum1 scan look?

don't mind the TA tests...it's been discussed as to how they are not reliable.

Thanks for recommending this program, I really like it! It tells me under the "ATA" heading that my HD is in UDMA-5 mode (and everything else that I'm ever going to want to know about my HD ), but under the "Optical drives" heading it only tells me that a PX 716A is present in my computer, but doesn't seem to have any info about it. Or am I missing something?