Caviar Blue 250GB AAM

RizlaKing

RizlaKing

RizlaKing

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Hi all recently bought three WD drives from OcUK a 2tb a 500gb and the 250gb the last one is a problem. Performance is way down on what it should be latest version of hdtune reports access time as being over 110ms and whilst looking i noticed AAM is set to the lowest of 128. Are there any utilities i can use to enable AAM and set it to performance or is this normal which i find hard to believe.

Other two drives are great no complaints on them but as the 250 is the main boot drive such poor performance is not good enough. Thanks for any help always appreciated :).

Ok been doing some testing just to ease my mind hdtune finds no physical problem with the platter error scan came back totally clean and the western digital lifeguard program also found no problems after extended test. Looking at the hdtune info screen the box for aam is not ticked which normally means it isn't supported but that cannot be right it is ticked on my 500gb drive so surely the 250 should have it also ?.

After doing some research elsewhere some people have used a program called hddscan to enable aam on some western digital drives but i havn't heard of the program before and am wary of using it hopefully some of you on here are more familiar with it. If the program is fine is it ok to enable aam if the drive is not reporting support for it. Sorry if i am asking noob questions but hard drives are not something i have put much time into in the past they have always just gone in and worked or had a problem that was easily identified and sorted.
 
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AHCI is enabled noise isn't the problem it is that the 250gb drive doesn't report aam as a feature although hdtune latest version shows the drive set at 128. I wanted to know if there was anyway to enable aam and set it to performance to get the best from the drive.
 
I don't have any problem with noise on the drives at all all three of them are quieter then the drives they replaced. My problem is the 250gb caviar blue that in hdtune doesn't have AAM ticked as a feature of the drive and in the AAM screen shows it is set to lowest setting. I was hoping someone on here that also had the same drive could tell me if they had AAM as a feature so i could use a program to alter it.

Failing that to hear other people's experiences and go from there.
 
Unless im mistaken AAM refers to Automatic Acoustic Management and hence why I made reference to noise in my post and perhaps why Surveyor did also.
 
Yeah i understand that and appraciate the responses but this has me puzzled as the 500gb drive of the same model has it ticked yet the 250 doesn't i don't know if there is a problem. Tried looking on the WD site and not a lot of help there but lots of mention of noisy drives which seem to be a problem for some maybe as i am getting older i am getting deafer so the noise isn't the problem for me it is for others lol.

As i said never had any real problems with hard drives in the past so not sure how to deal with this seems logical to me that the 250 should have AAM as a feature and that i should be able to set it to performance but not sure if it isn't showing as a feature if it would be wise to try to force enable it if you see what i mean.
 
My link was to a program which supposedly allows you to alter the AAM setting.

The thread I linked to was of someone wanting to make their drive quieter.

What you want to do is the opposite.

If the program worked for them in altering the AAM setting it should hopefully work for you.

It doesn't matter if you're trying to increase or decrease the AAM setting.

If program works one way it will work the other.
 
I get that, where my problem is with hdtune on the info screen it lists the features a drive has a tick in the box means said drive has said feature. My 500gb caviar blue has AAM ticked and i can alter that setting. My 250gb does not have it ticked and i cannot alter the setting and to me it seems logical that if the 500 has the feature the 250 should.

So my problem is does the drive have a problem in that a feature is not recognised does it need a firmware update or is it simply a case of using a program to enable the feature and alter it.
 
Have you tried the program I linked to to see if you can change it?

If not try it.

If you try it and it won't change the setting then I suggest you contact WD and ask them.
 
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