mgh:

You need to set the drive to Enabled, auto in the BIOS setup, see your documentation manual. That will detect the drive at the motherboard level.

Seriously, try the above first. I just installed a DVD writer (as the second DVD/CD-ROM drive) in my system on the Secondary IDE Channel. When I rebooted, it was showing the new DVD writer as PIO.

I went into the Dell System Setup and, sure enough, the second drive (showing up as "slave") was set to OFF. I changed that to AUTO, rebooted, and, voila, the drive is now DMA 2.

So try the same thing with your Primary Channel. I'll bet the second device is set to OFF in System Setup. Press F2 when you see blue Dell logo.

Good news - he has found a solution (new PCI controller card) - no more suggestions needed

jazz- onlysony found a solution, the original poster hasn't said whether or not he's found a solution.

I bow to you Onlysony. It worked! Both devices on primary channel now at UDMA mode 5. That is faster than before.

rprice54, Sorry for the confusion, I was at UDMA mode2 on device 0 originally, so my post was not accurate. Also, I did find several posts on the Dell boards describing exactly the same problem I was having, but no solutions. Not sure how old the posts were, but I'll see if I can pass on Onlysony's tip.

If I were not so old, I'd jump up and click my heels.
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and help.

rprice and others - my apologies to you all, I was confused.

I really must learn not to post after another 14-hour day

A second thanks, and a little follow up.
It appears that the capture problem was caused entirely from the new HDD being in PIO mode. Thanks to onlysony I was able to figure out to get this Dell to change new drive to UMDA mode5. Since that change I have experimented capturing to both the new HDD and the original with excellent results. WinDV shows no dropped frames in status bar, Movie Studio shows 107 frames dropped in approximately 8 minute capture. Don't know which one is more accurate, but great results anyway.

did you fix the hd situation?

Interesting thread! Great teamwork by all of you.

I know I'm late but I have one last suggestion. For best performance, the two hard drives should be masters on separate IDE channels. This prevents one drive waiting while the other drive monopolizes the channel. At UDMA 5, you should never drop frames because the transfer rate is well below the headroom of the drive. If you are still dropping frames, it is likely because you have both hard drives on the same channel.

But all instructions, with the new hard drives and with Dell PC's say to put second hard drive on the same channel as the first because the first is taken up by the cd rom and dvd drives. I had this problem of a slow drive after installing a Maxtor as a secondary drive. After 10 power ups on the computer the maxtor would run properly, this is some safety device they have added for shipping on their hard drives..........Works great now.

ideally you could have each drive on it's own channel, but most out of the box PCs today only have two channels, so you'd have to add an additional PCI Card.

I've never (knock on wood) had a dropped frame with my two DMA 5 drives on the same channel. OS and programs on one drive, capture to the other.

I have noticed on my ide channels, my primary has both devices at dma and on my secondary one device is dma, one pio. Now how do I know where my hard drives are, primary or secondary?

It would be most unusual to have a system with the hard drives on the secondary controller, simply because for many years, the OS had to be on the primary controller (and set as master).

Although newer systems no longer have this restriction, the custom and practice is still overwhelmingly adopted. It is fairly safe to assume that both of your hard drives are on the primary controller.

To check, either enter the BIOS (typically by pressing the Delete key as the PC starts up) and look for the IDE setup screen.

The alternative is to take the side of the case off, and follow the ribbon cable(s) from your hard drives back to the motherboard. The IDE ports on the motherboard should be marked as primary and secondary (or sometimes as 0 and 1 respectively).

Your motherboard should have 2 IDE channels, IDE0 and IDE1. Each IDE channel has two connectors. If both of your hard drives are on the same cable, one on each connector, then both drives are on the primary channel (IDE0). I guess your CD rom drive and DVD burner are on the second IDE channel (IDE1). I would put the DVD burner on IDE0 as the slave and put the second hard drive on IDE1 as master. Make sure you put the second hard drive on the connector at the end of the cable and either set it for CS or Master.

My understanding is if you put a CDROM and HD on the same channel, the channel will operate at the speed of the slowest component, the CDROM, which is DMA 2. But if both HD's are on the same channel they can both be DMA 5.

also, will a CDROM work on a 80pin ribbon? To have full UDMA you need an 80 pin ribbon, not the 40 pin that comes with most optical drives.

A small correction. The newer ribbons are 80-wire, but still have the same 40 pins (for obvious compatability reasons).

The additional wires do not carry any signals themselves (they can't, they are not connected to any pins), but they effecticely act to soak up stray signals from the other 40 wires. This reduces crosstalk, and therefore reduces error-correction requirements, resulting in higher data transfer.

80-wire cables work fine with any ide/ata device, including CD and dvd readers and writers.

See http://www.techexams.net/technotes/apluscore/ide.shtml and http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm