IDE hdd block mode?

[tyle6]

ok, so im woundering about this. will block mode function properly under sataII on a perpindicular drive or am i better off to just turn block mode off?

[Xero (1)ne]

Leave it on.


IDE HDD Block Mode

Common Options : Enabled, Disabled

Quick Review

This BIOS feature speeds up hard disk access by transferring multiple sectors of data per interrupt instead of using the usual single-sector transfer mode. This mode of transferring data is known as block transfers.

When you enable this feature, the BIOS will automatically detect if your hard disk supports block transfers and set the proper block transfer settings for it. Depending on the IDE controller, up to 64KB of data can be transferred per interrupt when block transfers are enabled. Since all current hard disks support block transfers, there is usually no reason why IDE HDD Block Mode should be disabled.

Please note that if you disable IDE HDD Block Mode, only 512 bytes of data can transferred per interrupt. Needless to say, this will significantly degrade performance.

Therefore, you should disable IDE HDD Block Mode only if you actually face the possibility of data corruption (with an unpatched version of Windows NT 4.0). Otherwise, it is highly recommended that you enable this BIOS feature for significantly better hard disk performance!


http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=97

[tyle6]

thank xero, i wasn't sure if blocks would be detected correctly with a perp. drive. guess they are!! what about HPET? i know XP doesn't use HPET only APIC. would i best off to disable this?

[PP Mguire]

Really i say dont disable anything thats normaly not disabled. If you needed to do anything special to run these drives im sure theyd have in big letters on the instructions to disable something.