Should I use PIO or DMA mode for protections?

[IceBreaker]

...
You are using generic drivers pal, and I use optimized (SW IDE).

O O O not so fast dude

I don't know what U're talking about - "generic" drivers ? "optimized" drivers ?!? As far as I know I've only seen the official WHQL-certified nforce2 drivers - which include those for IDE controller & all the rest. I'm using the latest: version 2.45, and according to BIOS both my CD-RW and DVD-ROM are running at UDMA mode 2 hehe

Anyways glad U solved the prob - except for the fact that for now U'll have to make do without DVD reading, so much 4 "optimized drivers"..

I still do not have a clue why they made CD-ROMs UDMA 2 compatible, 52x = 7.2Mb transfer MAX, so even UDMA 0 (16Mb/sec) is overkill...

Simple & obvious - to allow for progress. With CD devices getting faster and faster, it won't be long till even UDMA mode 2 can't keep up..
Think of Windows 2000 for example: at the time it was developped, PCs with over 256 Mb RAM were scarce - yet Win2000 supports up to 4 Gb RAM!