What is Spread Spectrum Clocking for SATA II HDD

[Capitalist]

I have 2 X 250GB Hitachi SATA II drives hooked up to my Chaintech Ultra nForce4. Both the motherboard and the drives support Spread Spectrum Clocking and I am wondering if I should use this feature. Does anyone know what this is?

 

[pm]

Spread Spectrum Clocking is a frequency modulation technique that is used to reduce EM emissions to reduce noise interference. See the section in this Wikipedia article on SS Clock Generation.

As far as whether you should turn it on or not... well, it shouldn't hurt anything and might help, so: yes, turn it on.

 

[CrispyFried]

Ive heard it should be off, especially if you overclock.

 

[Capitalist]

I will leave it off, thanks!

 

[NaughtyGeek]

All spread spectrum functions should be disabled if you overclock. Most moden BIOSs will actually do this for you when you change you FSB value. If you're not experiencing any performance issues, enabling this option probably won't do anything for you.