[TIP] Make your HD absolutely silent

MaxDamage

Hi all. For some months I had a Seagate 40Gb as primary HD. It was slow as hell, 5600rpm, but was very quiet. In fact, was impossible to hear when working. I thought the rubber protection it had absorbed vibrations.

Well, I bought a new Maxtor 160Gb HD, 7200rpm, and is fast as Speedy Gonzalez LOL I passed from 24 Mb/s transfers to 56Mb/s ones. A big difference. But... also makes noise. Not a lot, but I liked my old Seagate not being noticeable inside an emerge -UDpv world.

SOLUTION: I had played a bit with hdparm and I remember an option that said to make the HD quieter. Also said it could make the drive slower. I tried it:

riksta · Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 11:45 am Post subject:

hey, just thought i'd add my input on this

i used the command, and got

/dev/hda:
setting acoustic management to 128
acoustic = 128 (128=quiet ... 254=fast)

but i really don't hear the slightest difference

Rick

MaxDamage · Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 11:49 am Post subject:

It depends a lot in the HD model. As I said in my Maxtor the difference was big, while in the Seagate, it was silent with any value.

Also probably not-so-recent HDs haven't this feature implemented, so the change won't make any difference at all.
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JuNix · Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 10:29 am Post subject:

Acoustic Management works by making your hard disk work more slowly. This does not affect it's transfer rate, but it does adversely affect it's seek times, by slowing down the physical head movement speed. Therefore it will take longer for filesystem operations to occur which seek the disk heads.

Acoustic management is actually on by default for some drives. I turned mine off, since the fans in my machine are like a F11 fighter plane during take-off so it wouldn't matter anyway :-)

MaxDamage · Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 11:01 am Post subject:

coax · Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 11:27 am Post subject:

You could also put your hard disk on the floor and whack it with a sledge.
It will make less noise than ever. :lol:

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herlock · Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:50 pm Post subject:

Very great !

I have a Maxtor 80Gb and He mades a lot of noise
With this options, i don't hear any noise

Really thanks