SATA DVD and Blu-Ray burners now running in PIO mode

[nitewulf]

This one has me stumped. I tried playing an apparent bad disc on my Win 7 desktop and after a couple of tries, windows apparently set the 2 burners to PIO mode. I know this because the time changed drastically to burn a disc and one software program I used reported both drives in PIO mode. I tried all the usual things like switching cables to different SATA ports, uninstalling and reinstalling in device manager, reinstalled MB chipset drivers and ran intel update utility. Firmware on all drives is current. I switched out the drives for 2 spare sata DVD/Blu-ray burners and the same result: stuck in PIO mode. As all 4 drives can't be bad at the same time, it's obviously an OS problem I would think unless the MB sata controller/ports went south. It's an ASUS P8P67 Pro. The drives are connected to the Intel (light blue) 3 GB sata ports. Short of reinstalling Win 7, am I missing something obvious? I tried switching from AHCI to IDE controller and that speeded up the drives (reading), but writing was still slow. One burn program reported "DMA not supported on this bus".
One program now identifies both as IDE drives and they are not. They are SATA drives attached to sata connectors.

How do I get my drives back to normal speed and recognized properly in Windows 7? I've checked and rechecked bios settings, but nothing there unless I missed something.

 

[carwiz]

Yeah, I read somewhere that recurring I/O errors will do that. You might try resetting CMOS memory to clear all the hardware regions. This will force the BIOS to re-evaluate the hardware. Might work. Other than that, I'm stumped.

 

[OvenMaster]

Okay. You've switched out the suspect burners with replacements, and double-checked AHCI vs IDE status (some burners like mine work far better in IDE mode on SATA ports than in AHCI mode). You've also reinstalled chipset drivers. I'm pretty confident that both SATA cables are okay.

I had a similar problem a few years ago that ultimately was found to have been caused by a failing power supply damaging the BIOS chip as well as the I/O controller (southbridge chip). I replaced the burners and power supply with no effect... the damage had been done. My only remaining option was to replace the motherboard.

I really hope it doesn't come to this but I'm pretty sure that's the issue here.

 

[Layback Bear]

This site my be helpful. It's a good read at least.

Speeding up my CD/DVD-ROM: what are PIO and DMA, and how do I change the setting?

 

[nitewulf]

Thanks to all who replied. I was considering reinstalling Windows 7 to see if that would correct the problem. Obviously, if it's a hardware failure that would do nothing. The funny thing is that I haven't noticed any other problems or symptoms of a failing power supply. I'll let you guys know if I solve it. Maybe I should just use an old ide burner I have on the ide controller. It will probably be faster

 

[nitewulf]

Just an update to say I moved both optical drives to the Marvell Controller (AHCI mode). They are now working fine as they should. With 3 hard drives in the system, perhaps I was trying to run too many devices from the Intel ports? Doesn't matter now as they're working fine.

 

[Layback Bear]

Very good. Nice to see things are working.
Happy computing.