I am having problems running the Hitachi Feature Tools, which would allow me to change the automatic acoustic management settings on my hard drive. My first drive was a Hitachi 250 gb SATA which I ended up RMA'ing because it was too loud and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it (see below). I then got a Western Digital 320 gb IDE drive, since it's gotten good marks for being quiet and I thought perhaps the SATA controllers were giving me fits. Anyway, the WD drive is quieter than the Hitachi out of the box, but I'd really like to make it silent (seek noise is audible from several feet away from the PC). According to WD, their drives are AAM-capable, but they don't provide software to change the AAM settings.
So, I've tried both SATA and IDE drives, and I have tried using a floppy boot disk as well as burning a bootable CD-ROM with an iso image, yet in every case all I can do is accept the Hitachi software's license agreement and then watch my PC hang as the software scans my computer connected disk drives. (It finds the hard disk--primary IDE controller/master; nothing on primary/slave; then it finds the DVD-RW drive on secondary/master; nothing on secondary/slave; then it appears to go back to scanning the primary IDE controller and that's when it freezes.) At this point, the only remedy is to kill the master power switch on my PSU.
Does anyone have some suggestions for getting around this problem so that I can use the Hitachi tools, or are there alternatives for changing AAM settings on my hard drives (those that are AAM-enabled, at least)? There is nothing on Hitachi's website to suggest a conflict with my setup (the MSI motherboard uses a Silicon Image chip for the SATA controller, but I'm not sure about the IDE controller).
Thanks!
So, I've tried both SATA and IDE drives, and I have tried using a floppy boot disk as well as burning a bootable CD-ROM with an iso image, yet in every case all I can do is accept the Hitachi software's license agreement and then watch my PC hang as the software scans my computer connected disk drives. (It finds the hard disk--primary IDE controller/master; nothing on primary/slave; then it finds the DVD-RW drive on secondary/master; nothing on secondary/slave; then it appears to go back to scanning the primary IDE controller and that's when it freezes.) At this point, the only remedy is to kill the master power switch on my PSU.
Does anyone have some suggestions for getting around this problem so that I can use the Hitachi tools, or are there alternatives for changing AAM settings on my hard drives (those that are AAM-enabled, at least)? There is nothing on Hitachi's website to suggest a conflict with my setup (the MSI motherboard uses a Silicon Image chip for the SATA controller, but I'm not sure about the IDE controller).
Thanks!
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