WD AAKS + AAM - watch out

Buckster · 19 Jan 2008 at 08:54

had 2 new shiney 500gb AAKS's arrive yesterday

installed them as RAID0

rain some tests and was horrified to find random access time of 19.5ms !!

did some searching on the net and found that could be that AAM was on - sure enough it was - and on full ! - ie full quiet.

Downloaded the hitatchi feature tool bootable ISO, then in my case as drives were set to RAID and it couldn't see them in that mode I had to switch in bios to SATA compatible mode (which in my case didn't destroy my RAID but beware), then for each drive - instead of turning AAM off I just slid it all the way to the right - as custom AAM - ie max performance

before - random access = 19.5ms

after - random access = 13.4ms !

hope this is of help,

Mark.

RichL · 19 Jan 2008 at 16:43

how can you tell if AAM is on?

helmutcheese · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:05

Sandra SI will warn you in the ATAPI Section (used to be on older builds)

And Hitachi tool will show you its ON and what LEVEL its at.

Raptors are also set to ON, I kill it totally on any drive I have thats supports it.

Firegod · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:26

helmutcheese said:
Sandra SI will warn you in the ATAPI Section (used to be on older builds)

And Hitachi tool will show you its ON and what LEVEL its at.

Raptors are also set to ON, I kill it totally on any drive I have thats supports it.

Cheers for that mate. Just run Sandra SI and found it was set to ON for my Raptor (but not for the Barracuda). Will get that turned OFF right now.

Nice one!

Thebug · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:39

What can i use to turn it off on a raptor?
Is it the hitatchi feature tool bootable ISO
Cheers

helmutcheese · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:44

Thebug · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:48

helmutcheese said:
Yes

Thanks

Firegod · 19 Jan 2008 at 17:56

Thebug said:
What can i use to turn it off on a raptor?
Is it the hitatchi feature tool bootable ISO
Cheers

Aye that's what I've just used on a floppy.

perox · 19 Jan 2008 at 18:38

Ive just done this on one of my WD320AAKS and its dropped my access time from 18 to 12.9.

A lot louder though. Thing is, only one of my HD's show up in Hitachi tool :confused:

Greenlizard0 · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:31

Hmm..this really works eh?

Greenlizard0 · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:42

Uggh, having problems burning this with imgburn - where can I find a file to make it bootable?

Greenlizard0 · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:43

Are your drives much noisier now btw?

perox · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:49

Greenlizard0 said:
Are your drives much noisier now btw?

Yea they are, a lot louder.

Firegod · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:49

Greenlizard0 said:
Uggh, having problems burning this with imgburn - where can I find a file to make it bootable?

Download it from MajorGeek, just go to the CD-ROM .iso one and it the bottom it lists a link for the floopy version. Lol actually to save you hassle, here is the link,

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/Ftool-ver208.exe

Greenlizard0 said:
Are your drives much noisier now btw?

Haven't noticed my drive being any louder, however it may be because even though the AAM was enabled, it was set to performance. So i've probably been running at full levels anyway.

Buckster · 19 Jan 2008 at 19:59

mmm interestingly my AAKS's aren't any much louder - possibly a tiny tiny bit - but not noticeable - still almost completely silent

but a lot quicker

glad this thread has helped some people out

question - why would WD release some identical drives out (1) with AAM on and (2) AAM off

yshaikh01 · 21 Jan 2008 at 15:57

I tried to use this on my 320GB AAKS and in Native SATA it did not detect anything, in Legacy IDE it crashed with an unhandled exception.

helmutcheese · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:20

I know it can take ages at the Detecting HDD stage, but Ive only used on Nvidia Controlers.

yshaikh01 · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:23

helmutcheese said:
I know it can take ages at the Detecting HDD stage, but Ive only used on Nvidia Controlers.

Sorted it moved the HD to the first SATA port, and my AAM is disabled, although I changed the settings to max and min to see if it makes any diff but sound wise it was not that much diff.

helmutcheese · 21 Jan 2008 at 16:26

There is a TEST inside the APP, it sure makes a real Racket if you set to OFF and run TEST on Raptors.

PhillyDee · 21 Jan 2008 at 17:01

helmutcheese said:
Raptors are also set to ON, I kill it totally on any drive I have thats supports it.

I read this thread thinking woo! faster raptor. Until i used the drive tool, and it was already set to disabled. I even used HDTach before to get a comparison. 7.9ms Access time 77Mb/s sustained transfer. Was hoping for more performance.