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What is PIO Mode and how does it work?

April 26, 2017mode PIO

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What is PIO Mode and how does it work?

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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.