SATA crunches harder than my IDE?

Sniper82

Lifer
Feb 6, 2000
16,517
0
76
Exactly the same drive(80gb,7200,8mb) except one is SATA the other IDE. Both pass Seagate tools. But the SATA drive I can here crunching in my PC when I am loading a game or transfering files. I didn't notice this with my IDE.

This normal?
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
8,808
0
0
Silent PC Review had a couple hard drive reviews recently... they noticed two things:

1) There is a fair amount of variation between individual drives, let alone different models from the same manufacturer.

2) For some drives of the same size on different interfaces, not all of them were coming with the same acoustic settings (many newer drives can be adjusted to either run faster or run quieter). It might have been Seagate where they noticed this, but I'd have to dig up the review again.
 

Sniper82

Lifer
Feb 6, 2000
16,517
0
76
Well the noise doesn't bother me much. I just bought it used and wanna make sure its fine before I pay. I just got it installed lastnight. The guy said I could fully test it before sending payment.
 

batmanuel

Platinum Member
Jan 15, 2003
2,144
0
0
Acoustic management is not enabled on the SATA Barracudas like there is on the IDE versions, which is probably why it is thrashing louder.

From Silent PC Review:

7200.7 does not allow user control over AAM. At idle, both the SATA and PATA versions are very quiet, about on par with the Barracudia IV. Seek with PATA may be almost as good as the IV; it is not clear whether AAM is turned off/on on all production. The SATA models definitely do not have AAM turned on, and their seek/write noise is much higher. Some very quiet PATA samples have surfaced, mostly from Seagate's new China factory, but findings are inconsistent. Check user comments in many forum threads.

(Edited to reflect some more research on my part).
 

sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
0
It's all about the mounting.

REMEMBER, if you use non conductive resilant mounting, use a ground strap to ensure the drives are bonded to the system chassis.