IDE confusion

[Herzeg Dva]

I have a Soltek/VIA mobo with 2 IDE's.. Hooked to the cables are 2 LG optical drives (both newish and DMA-capable) and 2 harddisks (one is an old Maxtor from 2001, the other a newer WD Caviar, DOM 2006).. All four devices are running at Ultra DMA Mode 2 according to Dev Manager (33.3 megs), but I thought they should be Mode 4 at least?! Granted, the older Maxtor is slowing down the Caviar (since they're on the same cable), but what of the LG drives? Can't they do Mode 4/6? Is there a way to bump up the DMA modes without screwing XP up? Or should I get better cables? Perhaps separate the two harddisks?

[Mikhail_16]

this all depends really. Number one, the speed on the ide channel is the speed of the slowest device. two, do you know that your optical drives are capable of those dma speeds? do you know that the motherboard is capable of that? do you know that the ide channel is capable of that? Why didn't you go sata to begin with? are your cables proper (there are two kinds of ide cables 'thick wire' and 'thin wire', both of yours should be thin to get best performance)?

ps. no, not really that i know of. xp does whatever it wants to do in the end.