HTPC, 10,000 rpm hard drive too noisey

sare^baw's · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:05

i just bought a htpc second hand recently which has the following hard drives installed.

35gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor running os and apps

160gig seagate barracuda 7200rpm for storage

now the pc is quite noisey, is this due to the o/s hdd being 10,00 rpm? The noise is like i remember on an old cráppy hdd that you could hear working away, its not the spinning noise that is loud. I want to make the pc a bit quieter so what is the best thing i can do here?

I have another pc which has an 80gb seagate hdd and a new maxtor 250gb hdd. Should i just install the o/s on a 7200 rpm drive and just use whatever other drive i want for storage.

so would it be ok using the 80gb seagate for o/s and storage and the 250gb for storage?

james.miller · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:06

quite possible. just unplug the drive and boot the pc up. it wont load anything, but all the components will be working and you'll be able to tell if it is the drive making all that noise

and welcome to the forums

amdnv · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:07

Its not the spindle speed your hearing your correct its the arms seeking lol, you can try hitachi's feature tool and see if you can turn the AMM (acoustic managment) to better setting.

sare^baw's · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:21

thanks

i have unplugged the drive and all components are silent, its noisey as windows loads and when you open a program etc so i would say its defo the hdd.

does this hitatchi feature tool work on any drive and what does it do and is it simple to use?

amdnv · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:28

Hmm not sure but i used to use IBM/Maxtor tool on EIDE HDD's but then SATA arrived and it couldnt see them, so I after many months found 1st build of Hitachi's tool now build 2.x I think.

I will copy paste from my other post here :

Quote
"
Its on a lot of makes of HDD's but not all, its a way of making the seek arms slower so quieter, I see no point in buying a Raptor for quietness so no point in AMM being on by default, grab the Hitachi feature tool from their main site as its only one to see SATA HDD's, I used to use old IBM tool which had some 3rd party name on maxtor EIDE's HDD'S but it cant see SATA HDD's

Basically boot to the floppy, or bootable .ISO and follow on screen info till you at the Raptor and you can do lot of stuff but I dont think turning off SMART stays off or does much for gaining speed so only mess with AMM, also dont touch your read or write cache, its myth about turning one or both of to gain anything your HDD will be major slow take it from me, I had a cache chip die on me once and PC was slow and it took me days to work out what was wrong.

You can set AMM to any setting from off to diff specs in between on or off then hit TEST button and you will hear how loud it is at current setting, my Raptor aint louder now but if it seeks it will rattle away but I dont mind I wanted speed not a job in a libary."

BTW not all HDD's have this feature, Sandra SI will tell you if it supports and if its on or off.

sare^baw's · 27 Mar 2006 at 14:37

cheers for that, not that i fully understad it all but it does not seem too difficult, will i be able to get this quiet enought for a living room enviroment, i dont really like the rattling noise the drive makes, if i tweak it will it still make some amount of noise?

i suppose i would like to keep the fast drive and have it quiet if possible.

im not clued up on how much difference there is going from 7200 rpm to 10000rpm, how much does it improve performance?

amdnv · 27 Mar 2006 at 16:27

Im back.

LOL, The idea of slowing the seeking arms down is to make it quieter, this is IF and only If your HDD supports, I cant say from here.
Again you would hit the TEST button with your current set up and listen to noise, then set it to a higher number and retest it till your happy, it may never make you happy though your HDD may simple be noisey or past its best.

NickK · 27 Mar 2006 at 23:07

Hmm sounds like a raptor... which isn't the best choice for a quiet HTPC... Samsung 7200rpm or better still a 5400rpm drive..

The quietest system I have is Tivo.. which has a 5400rpm drive..

sare^baw's · 28 Mar 2006 at 19:13

its seems that the problem is defo the problem and i will need to try the tool to se if i can make the drive quieter, if i dont get any joy i will just need to use one of the 7200rpm drives i already have.

could i use an spl meter to gauge how much noise each hdd is making to make the quieter choice?