Busmastering IDE drives

For some time now SCSI drives have delivered better system performance than the comparitively budget priced EIDE drives. But many computer audio enthusiasists are still told that SCSI is superior to IDE because of lower drain on CPU use. The truth is, by using a bus mastering driver with UDMA and ATA EIDE hard drives CPU usage is reduced and performance with some of the new drives, like the new Maxtors, can be better than some of the older SCSI drives around.....

What you will usually hear are things like: "SCSI is faster and less demanding on your CPU demanding". The fact of the matter is that, as far as audio applications are concerned,  the latest EIDE drives in DMA mode use little, if any more CPU cycles than SCSI hard drives! Data applications, networks, and desktop publishing is not audio. Real world audio tests with the some of the new ATA66 7200 spindle speed drives show multitrack capabilities of between 40 and 80 tracks!

For many on a budget, it means that by starting your digital audio system off with EIDE drives you can save a heap of cash, and with very little performance loss.

An array of SCSI drives is still recommended for digital audio systems, for both performance and expandability, but if you can't spare the extra dollars, a couple of whopping 6 or 10 or even 20 gig EIDE drives may leave you a few thousand you can spend on other gear.

By updating to or using a busmastering driver you free your drives up from PIO (programmed I/O where data is transferred to and from your IDE drives explicitly via CPU instructions) This gives your CPU more power to dedicate to other tasks including realtime effects processing etc.

Busmastering drivers have been around since the later revisions of Windows 95 and are included in Windows 98.

To identify which version of Windows you have:

Start - Settings - Control Panel - System.
 
 
 
 

Windows Version	Common Name
4.00.950	Windows 95 Retail
4.00.950a	Windows 95 OSR 1
4.00.950b	Windows 95 OSR 2.0/2.1
4.00.950c	Windows 95 OSR 2.5
4.10.1998	Windows 98 Retail
4.10.1998	Windows 98 Retail

 

If you are using the Windows 95 retail or OSR-1 release, you should download
and install the Intel BM-IDE driver for Windows 95.

If you are using the Windows 95 OSR 2, OSR 2.1, or OSR 2.5 releases, or
Windows 98, you should not download the Intel BM-IDE driver, as these
operating system versions already contain a BM-IDE driver from Microsoft.
 

For users of Windows 95 OSR2:

1. Click on - START - Settings - Control Panel - System Icon- Device Manager.

2. Click the Plus on Disk drives.

3. Choose the disk drive.

4. Click on properties.

5. Click the settings tab.

6. Put a check mark in the DMA box.

7. Repeat for other drives including your IDE CD-ROM.

8. Reboot when prompted.
 

For earlier versions of Windows 95 (Win95 950 & 950a) that do not include a busmastering driver you can check to see if it has already been installed.

Go to Control Panel -System - Device Manager.

Open Hard Disk Controllers.

If it includes the busmaster driver you should see "PCI Bus Master."

If its not there go to http://www.bmdrivers.com/ and download the drivers.
 

Windows 95 OSR2 and Wimdows 98 provides not only the busmastering driver but also FAT32 which utilizes hard drive space better.

Busmastering generally does not increase transfer rates but what it does do is relieve the CPU from the task of moving data around.

Users of the Creative Labs SB32 and AWE 64 should note that there is a known bug with the use of the Intel BusMaster Driver v3.01 but any serious sound recordist will want to update to a cleaner card anyway.

For detailed information about Enhanced IDE/Fast-ATA drives see
http://tehanu.hpcl.titech.ac.jp/disk/ata/atafq.html

To find an appropriate Windows 95/98 IDE Bus Master DMA Driver try: http://www.drivershq.com/

For more info and troubleshooting tips see:
http://www.sysdoc.pair.com/hdd.html#Bus Master
 

For info about SCSI drives versus EIDE drives try: http://www.lionsgate.com/Home/Baden/public_html_index/SCSI/EIDE_VERSUS_SCSI.HTML

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