Disable acoustic management on SATA drive

musicman53 · 9 May 2006 at 21:05

Bit of info for y'all
With all my hard drives I used to disable acoustic management and got a bit of a boost regarding general speed.
Just done it to my WD1600JS(SATA2)drives using the Hitachi(?)disk tool.
Always use that as there aint one for WD drives.
No rise in disk noise and gained a bit of speed.
:cool:

ChrisLX200 · 9 May 2006 at 23:12

Thought it was disabled by default? MAybe differnt on some makes.

musicman53 · 10 May 2006 at 08:11

ChrisLX200 said:
Thought it was disabled by default? MAybe differnt on some makes.

No, it's enabled by default.
The WD drives are the quietest I have ever owned.
Even with it disabled they are still quiet.

Clarkey · 10 May 2006 at 12:10

you kidding? My 320gb WD is the loudest HD ive ever owned, my previous seagate was a hell of a lot quieter.

musicman53 · 10 May 2006 at 21:19

Clarkey said:
you kidding? My 320gb WD is the loudest HD ive ever owned, my previous seagate was a hell of a lot quieter.

All I can say compared to any othr drive I have used(Seagate 120Gb, WD 120/160Gb ATA) the pair of WD1600JS(SATA2)drives can hardly be heard.
When disk activity is going on there is hardly any sound and while no real activity still the same.

Rednut05 · 10 May 2006 at 21:25

Ooo lets give this a try. Link me to that there tool you mentioned squire.

humax · 10 May 2006 at 22:36

try here
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
scroll down its called Feature Tool (v2.01)

humax · 10 May 2006 at 22:56

are you sure you should disable it .just looked on there sit and it say this

The Feature Tool allows you to:

* Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache.
* Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
o Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or
o Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode).

so should you change it to ( NORMAL SEEK MODE ) and not disable it fully

musicman53 · 11 May 2006 at 08:40

humax said:
are you sure you should disable it .just looked on there sit and it say this

The Feature Tool allows you to:

* Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache.
* Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
o Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or
o Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode).

so should you change it to ( NORMAL SEEK MODE ) and not disable it fully

Disable it.
I have always done that on all my drives.
Will not hurt it to do so.
Have used that"tool"on everything from Maxtors thru Western Digital SATA2 drives.
IF the drive is a bit loud then of course it will make it a bit louder but a bit faster.
Acoustic managemen when set to on does mean that the drive is not as fast as it could be(reduced noise) but a bit slower.
You can set acoustic management so that it is still on but say about 50% or so.
Never had a problem with it off tho.
All my drives have had different noise levels while just spinning and while there is disk activity.
But I found that the quietest so far are my WD1600JS SATA2.
With Acoustic management on or off there is no real difference noise wise.
Speedwise there is.