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- hitachi deskstar 7k1000.b
- hard drive benchmarks
- hard drive noise
- hitachi acoustic management
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Conclusion
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Changing a modern hard drive’s automatic acoustic management setting (AAM) from fast mode to quiet mode—or vice versa—did make a difference in our in-depth evaluation. However, this difference is only noticeable in a few benchmark disciplines, and is probably not very significant for average users.
Acoustic management settings can be changed using freeware or shareware utilities, or using the command line tools that you can typically find on your favorite hard drive manufacturer’s Web site. However, you have to work with a boot disc or a bootable floppy disc in most cases, which we found inconvenient. Despite only offering two options—fast or quiet—we used the application WinAAM instead.
Performance Changes
Setting your hard drive to quiet mode will mainly impact access time and I/O performance, which both dropped significantly: in quiet mode, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B performed like a two-year old hard drive in these benchmark categories. The decreased random activity performance also has an impact on application benchmarks, although the price you pay for silence will be acceptable for most users. Transfer rates, by the way, were not impacted at all.
Power Consumption
We expected drive idle power consumption to remain the same, but for reasons we cannot explain, it appears that the fast mode was actually a bit better in the power area, as long as the drive was idle or only taking on sequential workloads. The situation was entirely different for random workloads. In such a case, the “fast” drive delivered more performance at increased power consumption, which made the “quiet” drive the winner in terms of performance per watt. Differences for streaming operations were smaller.
Should You Do It ?
One question has yet to be answered: are the noise level improvements worth switching the acoustic management into quiet mode? If you are trying to reduce system noise, then the answer has to be yes. The reduced drive vibration level made a significant impact on our noise level measurements, and it has even more impact once the drive is installed into a case, which will always convey vibrations, making them audible. Enthusiasts using high-performance drives should definitely consider installing a sound dampening frame or enclosure. As long as you get a decent product, this will noticeably reduce hard drive noise without any performance impact. Average users with low performance ambitions should definitely spend some time to acoustically optimize their hard drive(s) by switching them into quiet mode.
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Unless you work in a studio, the sound from a HDD is so incredibly little I doubt most people even notice it.
Even on a near fanless system, with only a psu fan, that single fan would make more noise.. This all seems a little silly imo.
The sound from the hdd is by far the loudest part of my system.
Quick question - was AHCI / Native Command Queueing enabled on the drive?
Unless you work in a studio, the sound from a HDD is so incredibly little I doubt most people even notice it.Even on a near fanless system, with only a psu fan, that single fan would make more noise.. This all seems a little silly imo.
err, my 250gb SATA seagate was by far the loudest thing in my system. could hear it clearly scratching in games >< love my new WD 250gig tho - absolutely silent even with the side of the case off
To asdasd123123:
I agree with you, and also this Hitachi feature is very old one, I recall I was playing with it on my old 80 GB SATA2 HDD. It does make a difference till I bought Antec 180
To daskrabbe:
If u can hear your HDD screaming then you should change it!
Pay some respect to it because it kept your data safe for lots of years!
Also if it's new, change your cheap case, because it makes every other part of hardware vibrate!
If you ask me, my Raptors noise is music 2 my ears lol.
Invest in an SLC SSD. Noise problem solved.
Interesting article. I've been fiddling with computers for the last 12 years and I've never heard of AAM before! It seems like a viable option to reduce noise in a system. However, in my case, my GTX260 is the loudest part I have, even outside games. I'm not sure I would notice an impact at all. Maybe I should do some testing before judging though.
I have always disabled AAM on all my drives that I possibly could, Performance > Noise
Noise? ok, How about the CD/DVD drive! The changes in loudness and pitch are constantly averting my attention.
Yeah but who uses an optical drive these days? And when you do use it, do you use it constantly for hours? I use my drive to rip music, movies and games and that's pretty much it. Daemon tools takes care of the rest when I need a CD to play a game.
the loudest in my system is a high frequency noise when the system is idle. i suspect its my cheap asus am2 motherboard.
Unless you work in a studio, the sound from a HDD is so incredibly little I doubt most people even notice it.Even on a near fanless system, with only a psu fan, that single fan would make more noise.. This all seems a little silly imo.
Apparently you've never owned an original WD Raptor drive. I have two paired in a micro atx case sitting on my office table and I can attest that they are quite noticeable, although they are tolerable.
the loudest in my system is a high frequency noise when the system is idle. i suspect its my cheap asus am2 motherboard.
Check your PSU for whine.
I have always disabled AAM on all my drives that I possibly could, Performance > Noise
Me too! Performance = time. My time is more valuable than some old hard drives longevity and my appreciation of silence. AAM makes barely any difference in noise anyway.
To Zak who posted before you: If you've built PCs for 12 years and never heard of it, then I would have to ask what you've been doing for 12 years... I discovered it before I'd ever even built my own PC.
Could you enable this in the bios, or is that a different feature?
GREAT article! Silence is a must for me, especially as one of my machines is located in the living room and is almost always on! TY
thank you so much for this! I was unaware of such an option, and my hard drive drives me nuts if it gets going while I'm asleep (it will actually wake me up). Now I can barely hear it.
You wouldn't be putting a raptor in a silent computer in the first place, that argument doesn't make any sense.
I can admit I haven't owned either Hitachi or Seagate drivers for years, and WD drives has only made noise after a few years.
A little too many Seagates have broken around me to ever buy one again..
My three Samsung F1 1tb drives atm, are dead silent. I only hear them when the spin up, but when they hit their target RPM it just goes silent again.
My case is nothing special, although it is a very thick-sheet iron case.
I discovered it before I'd ever even built my own PC.
Gratz?
For my part, I guess I was just doing "normal" stuff. Building, configuring, tweaking, fixing errors, removing viruses and spywares, making backups, etc. It didn't occur to me that I could "downgrade" my hard drive in order to save a couple dB. Like I didn't think that downclocking a CPU could be very useful. It's just me I guess.