hdparm question

[MOS-FET]

hello,
i want to make my harddisk a bit more quiet. hdparm has an option to set the AAM (automatic acoustic management) but it says it's experimental. does this mean it could damage my harddisk or does this mean it propably just doesn't change anything? has anybody more info about or more experience with this? i _really_ don't want to damage my hd, i just bought it yesterday :-)

thanks
tom

[rojaro]

i've never been crazy enough to try that function as that experimental status really means that it might work or not and it might break your harddrive or not.

the aam feature also means spinning the disk at lower speeds which means less transfer rates than the harddrive is able to do and the main bottleneck in computer hardware today is not the processor or the ram or anything else but the harddrives. so if you want a silent harddrive, try to reduce the noise by better isolation. you might want to try a solution like this one.
_________________
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~ Alfred Renyi (*1921 - †1970)

[Malakin]

That link rojaro posted doesn't look it will do anything unless your current hard drive is causing some rattling from the vibrations.

If you have a hard drive that's always noisy, even when your computer isn't doing anything then it's the ball bearings. You could try insulating the inside of your computer case with some acoustic foam but the foam isn't exactly cheap and it's a bit of a hassle.

The best way to quiet it is to trade in the hard drive for a quiet one. All recent Seagates are quiet, Maxtor diamond plus 8 or 9's aren't too bad. Western Digital is still using ball bearings and some of them are very loud, I'd avoid them. The worst drives for noise in the last couple years are the older Maxtors, D740X for example which is quite common and just might be what you're using.

Hard drive reviews that include acoustic info can be found here:
http://storagereview.com/