noisy Maxtor/ IBM drive? help is here :)

[blackstar]

i didnt realize until today that Maxtor drives had acoustic management, which simply allows you to quieten your drive down (a hell of a lot, actually) at the cost of some seek time (i havent noticed any difference in apps, actually - i will post benchmarks later).

theres a couple of applications that will let you set acoustic management levels - the first is a Maxtor utility called AMSET, which can be found here (along with an article) http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=1200

this allows 3 levels - acoustic management on silent, off, and fast settings.
by default, i think the Maxtor +9 ships with management off, but not always - possibly why some people are posting very different reviews of this drive.
however, if you are using a SATA controller, that utility wont pick up the drive - it didnt on mine, running on silicon image.

so, you need this - its an IBM utility that also runs on Maxtors, and lets you set the acoustic management very finely. just switching it on made a huge diff here, and the RAID array is stil very fast(!).

grab it here:
http://ftp.uevora.pt/pub/Windrivers/Harddisk%20ATA66/IBM/

try it, its very good and post how you got on

[feignedboy]

Most of the maxtors have fluid bearings tho which I find extreamly hard to hear anyway...

Wish I knew that link when I had my old Deathstar :(

[blackstar]

fluid bearings only affect idle noise - those utilities change the seek noise, which is what most people complain about.

if you have a +9 and can't hear the seek noise, its possible it has acoustic management enabled already - in which case, you dont need those utilities :)

[sambartle]

Just a quick post to say IBM also have a specific tool for (on the IBM/Hitatchi site) this that gives about 15 performcance/noise settings for the deathstars. (this may be the same one linked above, if it is feel free to flame me for stupidity and not downloading and checking)

On my 120GXP it can be as loud as mine, or silent if you want it to be and itll show the speed changes graphically as you adjust.

[blackstar]

thats the one ;)

good, isnt it? suprising how much of a difference it makes, theres very little performance hit and a large improvement acoustically :D

[streetster]

on my p4 rig, there is a program called Intel Application Accelerator (IAA i think), which allows you to do all that kinda hard-drive fiddling about with stuff :)... didnt notice much difference on my 40gb ibm drive - i could still hear the whine as it was spinning, so i replaced it with a liquid bearing maxtor9 sata150 one... lovely jubbly.

mark