If you are using P4 or Xeon motherboard, you must update the kernel to version 2.5.12 in order to support this mode. Please search on RedHat website for more detail instruction and explaination. Here's a quick way to do this task:
*To enable DMA: hdparm -d1/dev/hda
*To disable DMA: hdparm -d0/dev/hda
*To measure transfer rate: hdparm -Tt/dev/hda