JoJo,

Just to explain one thing about your comment about: "I know DMA is on, but it doesn't show it in the boot..."

I've looked at my init.d file, and way, way, way, down at the bottom, the last thing it does is "copy" the boot output to a file, so it can be viewed with something like dmesg, or something like that...

RIGHT AFTER THAT: it has a hdparm command, at least in mine it does, which sets the DMA to ON, on my hda device. This command, after looking at the man page for the hdparm command, has a "silent" switch placed on the line. So, it is doing a hdparm, which, one, doesn't get displayed to the boot screen, and two, doesn't get "copied" to the output file.

I realized all of this when I needed to add a DMA set to ON for my DVD device, and they suggested adding it to the init.d file, "somewhere near the bottom"... to keep the DMA settings between booting.

Hope this helps, at least a little, (even if it, probably, is off-subject)
Cuddles