HDD info in advanced mode meaning

In Advanced mode SIGuardian shows your:

• ATA/ATAPI - version numbers of ATA/ATAPI standards supported by your HDD. Most modern HDD supports 4 version of standard.

• Maximum PIO supported mode - PIO is the faster mode of transfer operation when default, but it uses the CPU for transferring data. Maximum mode always supports lower modes - for example, if your HDD supports PIO mode 4 - it also supports PIO 3, PIO 2-1

• Maximum Multi Word DMA (MWDMA) mode - multi word DMA mode is the mode of transfer operations that use DMA - so it doesn't use the CPU while transferring data - so you can do make anything else while your HDD is working.

• Ultra DMA mode - new mode supported mostly in Pentium and other high-end systems. In this mode it also keeps the CPU free while the system transfers data, but it can work faster than MWDMA mode.

In Advanced mode, SIGuardian shows different technical information about possible hard disk work modes and standards supported by this HDD.

Supported standards

SIGuardian reports about which standards your hard disk supports.

Today these standards are present:

 SIGuardian can reports what your HDD supports one of the following data transfer modes:

Moreover, consider that in transfer modes "PIO mode #" the CPU is used to transfer data, so in such modes CPU utilization is higher than in DMA or UDMA modes.