After a lot of searching I can't find a program(for DOS or Windows) that allows you to set the transfer mode of a drive (PIO 0-4, MWDMA 1-2, UDMA 1-6) and then you can test the drive using that mode.

I want to do this as an old backup program I use only works with MWDMA-2 and crashes on anything faster.
Basically computer loads Windows in the fastest UDMA mode the drive support, I want to then change the drive mode to MWDMA-2 and then run the program.

Could you tell us the name of the old program?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

It's called Rescue v5.3 Professional - 1996 - back then the first to support MWDA instead of just PIO modes.

I've tried MHDD in Dos but the CONFIG command won't work on any drive I try, I think that is needed to setdifferent transfer mode speeds support by drives.
MHDD was last updated in 2003 so probably too old for newer drives.

MHDD v4.5 has an ATA terminal. The PIO/MWDMA/UDMA modes are set by the ATA Set Features command, EFh (subcommand 03h = set transfer mode). I expect that there won't be any difference with this approach, though.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Have you looked at HDAT2?

https://www.hdat2.com/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I don't understand why backup software would need to access a drive at such a low level. I would have thought that the application would only need to tell the OS to read and write sectors. How the OS goes about it should be transparent to the application, should it not?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Because it is too specific for different MB chipsets, all this was placed in BIOS ...

This means that the PIO and DMA modes can only exist in IDE compatible modes.

FYI, there is a complete assembly listing of INT13h in the original IBM PC/AT BIOS at page 241:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/at/1502494_PC_AT_Technical_Reference_Mar84.pdf

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Good programs for HDD work directly with ports.
Sorry, I said something unclear earlier. I meant initializing the motherboard chipset.

Hdat2 only works booting directly to DOS, and DOS has severe limitations as it does not support any DMA mode unless a driver is loaded (config.sys).
The only Dos driver I have found that support MW-DMA2 is 'Triones' bus master ide driver. It only supports motherboards chipsets from 430FX (1995) to 440BX (1998) anything newer will not work.

So I tested this on a 440BX motherboard, set all the SSDs I have to MW-DMA2 in Hdat2 and it says OK, then exit to DOS and the computer froze at dos command prompt. As I saw in Windows, it seems no SSDs will work in any MW-DMA mode (they work fine when I force any PIO mode or UDMA mode).

The only Windows program I have found is 'Intel Ultra ATA Storage Driver v6.2" this is still very old, from 2001 and lets you set the transfer mode after a reboot. Again everything works when setting any UDMA mode or PIO mode. Changing to any MW-DMA mode causes the computer to freeze and crash.

So the problem is SSDs, they do not support any MW-DMA mode, even though they advertise them as supported. I don't think any manufacturer is going to fix this now.

Console ATA control utility for Windows NT3.51/NT4/2000/XP/2003
http://alter.org.ua/en/soft/win/uni_ata/atactl.php

You can give a try with it to change the transfer mode.

UniATA driver is needed to detect SATA drives.
http://alter.org.ua/en/soft/win/uni_ata/
Little caution with this driver, I suggest you making a Windows XP config especially for your tests.

But I don't know if it will change something in your case, because I agree with fzabkar, this thing is normally transparent and handled by the OS, you don't care to it when coding your app to read/write sectors/files.

I've tested all the SATA SSD I have now with various software in both DOS, XP and Windows 10.
The ones that do allow you to force MWDMA modes freeze/crash the computer. The others falsely report that they have switched to MWDMA mode (you can verify by transfer rate, capped at 16MB/S max) but have not set it.
All the utils CAN switch the SATA SSDs to PIO or UDMA modes.

I've read it on other forums the MWDMA modes do not work on SSDs but wanted to conform myself. All modern SSDs I ahve (2015 and newer) do not work in MWDMA modes (only PIO / UDMA and newer modes).

(In WinXP you can easily change the ATA Mode by changing a registry key 'DeviceTimingMode' (this is using Microsoft's default drivers, the most compatible and widely tested drivers available). It even sets the the drive in this new mode without rebooting the computer. I used this to confirm again no MWDMA mode works on all the SSD's I tested. They either crashed PC or XP reported the mode but didn't change it, again i confirmed by benchmark).