Want to quiet down your hard drive???

[RedBeard]

I had to look around for this and people who leave their PC's on 24/7 or media center might be interested in this:

Quoted from whiic on the storagereview forum:

Here's three links to Hitachi Feature Tool (version 1.99):
Windows boot diskette creator download
Boot diskette image for non-Windows systems
Bootable CD image with FTOOL

It works both on IBM/Hitachi drives and non-IBM/Hitachi drives. Of course Advanced Power Management (APM) cannot be configured on non-IBM/Hitachi drives simply because those drives doesn't have that feature (it impossible to implement APM without load/unload technology and others use it only in 2.5" and smaller form factor drives).

Seagates AAM setting cannot be configured with FTOOL. It's not a bug in the software, it's simply how Seagate wanted it to be. (I still don't get WHY they don't allow users to reconfigure it. It makes no sense.)

I have also tried SilentDrive. It a software that allows to change AAM in Windows, no boot diskette required, no reboot required, no installation required (just run the EXE)...
http://www.rt-sw.de/freeware/silentdrive.zip

I'm having some problems configuring SATA drives (mobo integrated controller, SIS Raid) with it, but it can set the AAM mode for PATA drives.

Hitachi FTOOL is more compatible with SATA drives.

I tried it on my older 120gb Western Digital SATA drive and it worked well. It does slow the drive down but usually it makes it signifigantly quieter.

 

[ChiBOY83]

you can also try to "suspend" your hard drive from elastic cords. mine is and its now inaudible (Hitachi T7K250, 160 gig sata)

..check out silentpcreview.com for more ideas on reducing HD noise or how to suspend a HD

 

[Madwand1]

Many drives come with AAM already enabled -- at a default value of FAST / high performance. I.e. there is some AAM, but in theory minimal though some performance impact. AFAIK, all current Maxtor (desktop) drives come with AAM enabled at FAST. A WD Raptor came with it disabled.

People should check what their AAM values are before mucking around with them and changing the values and even this can be difficult. SiSoft Sandra will report that AAM is enabled (as a performance tip/warning), but not report the value of AAM (whether FAST or QUIET, etc.).

HDDLife is a recently updated and not fully stable product that you can download and try for free to view and optionally change AAM settings. Note however that the "default" setting might correspond to the "recommended" value that is programmed by the HD manufacturer, and is often not the same as the value that comes programmed from the same HD.

E.g. Maxtor programs C0 (192) as the "recommended value". By the standard, this is a minumum "performance" setting. However, Maxtor ships their drives programmed for FE (254), which is the FAST / "maximum performance" setting. I.e. Maxtor doesn't take their own "recommendation". These two settings may be the same, or different -- it's up to the manufacturer, and Maxtor provides little info on this from what I've found, so we don't know.

Personally, I like speed, so it's either FE or disabled on my drives.

HDDLife doesn't work on RAID arrays, as with most utilities, but it works with SATA drives. Despite what they say in their documentation regarding supporting the latest vendor SATA drivers, I've found that sometimes you need to revert back to the default Microsoft drivers for it to work (uninstall the chipset SATA drivers, configure via HDDLife, and re-install the chipset driver).

Regarding RAID, if you're lucky, you can disable RAID temporarily (don't "fix" or "format" the drive or anything), read / optionally modify the AAM setting via HDDLife, and then re-enable RAID without losing any data. However, I'm not sure that this works with the latest HDDLife -- if might look at the (inconsistent) partition data when the drive is taken out of RAID but not re-formatted, and fail / crash. A backup of RAID data would be advisable before doing this sort of operation; data > performance / silence usually...

This stuff should be simpler and better supported than it is, but from what I've heard, there was an IP / patent fight over it which really muddied the waters and drove some stuff away / underground.

 

[Auric]

I've been using AAM/ACM for many years but was not aware of SilentDrive. Now I can keep 'em quiet as usual but temporarily make 'em as fast as possible for intensive schtuff. Groovy. Hey I wonder if I can cut my BF2 map load time by a few seconds... I got dibs on that plane!

Oddly, SD defaulted to Loud which suddendly made my drive louder than it was, rather than keeping and displaying the current settings. Perhaps it is a case of not having settings equivalent to Maxtor's?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Can you get to the tools if you have the hard drives setup on controllers? They aren't plugged into the mobo, so I've never even bothered trying to boot of the CDz (although I have created them).