Greetings.

Most times I use MHDD to erase a drive, it tells me:

"Working using PIO mode, which is very slow. To enable max speed please detect the drive in BIOS."

Truth is the dozens of drives I've been erasing in past months were all detected in BIOS. I've more than 40 to erase in the next month, so any hint to fix this would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Daniel

Are you running MHDD from CD? Try booting from a hard drive and running it from there. Some of the CD distros (like Ultimate Boot CD) cause the problem you are describing.

Thanks,
Phil

...and what is the version of MHDD do you have?

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Dmitry

I'm using version 4.6, running from a floppy disk.

Daniel

Well... then it is bios-related problem...

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Dmitry

I wouldn't be surprised if this was happening in a single computer, or in several computers with the same chipset or BIOS, but that's not the case. I'm talking about several computer and laptop configurations, and the fact is I rarely get a erase using BIOS settings.

Daniel

Actually, MHDD is really picky about this. The problem here is when you access the drive through BIOS you have to be 100% sure you're accessing THAT drive and not the next one (who'll like to erase their first drive instead of the second drive?). We have to locate a match between lets say hdd on port 170H and hdd number 81. And some BIOSes just do not pass some checks in MHDD, so this functionality just gets switched off.

Anyway, I did not see this to happen on modern computers, just on old ones and on some laptops.

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Dmitry

OK, now I understand Most computers I deal with are old ones.

Thanks.

Daniel

I'm using MHDD 4.6 on a Toshiba M1 (Yes it's crap...) but a IBM Travelstar IC25N040ATCS05-0 (40GB) will erase using BIOS fine, where as a Western Digital WD2500BEVE-00WZT0 (250GB) falls back to PIO mode.

On a Thinkpad T41 both drives will erase just fine using BIOS functions though...

I'm guessing MHDD doesn't have a way to switch the functionality back on? LBA appears to be functioning the same on the Toshiba as the Thinkpad when reporting drive dimensions, etc.

It's not like I could accidentally erase another drive if you did allow MHDD to bypass the check.


edited: got rid of fast erase since that wasn't what I was talking about

.... and what about the SIL680 cards with own bios and UDMA supporting?

Maybe that machine doesn't support 48-bit LBA? Dunno if that would make a difference.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Hello,

I have the same problem with Daniel Ferreira using the erase command ("Working using PIO mode, which is very slow. To enable max speed please detect the drive in BIOS.") in my Toshiba drive and Toshiba new laptop. I use a bootable disk with MHDD 4.6 version. Other commands, such as scan work properly.

The erase process is stuck in "LBA: 0, 0 MB completed" for long now. Is it destructive for the drive to forcefully stop the process using the power button? Are there any ways to deal with the PIO mode prob? I would appreciate some help in these two issues.