[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Motherboard and System Devices | System BIOS | BIOS Settings | IDE Device Setup / Autodetection ]

PIO Mode

This is the PIO mode setting for the IDE device. IDE/ATA uses one of two different ways to transfer information into and out of memory: either programmed I/O (PIO) or direct memory access (DMA). There are 5 different PIO modes, from 0 to 4, with 4 being the fastest. Newer drives support the faster modes.

You will normally want to select the highest mode that your drive supports. If you experience difficulties you may want to try to drop the mode down to a slower level, but this will impact performance.

Note: IDE autodetection will set this value automatically on most BIOSes, but on some this must be manually set; the autodetection won't do it.

Next: 32-Bit Transfer Mode

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