wots the seek noise like on a 40gb cuda IV with acoustic management set to quietest??

Its definately audible, its sort of like a soft clicking. I think IBM harddrives have more quiet seeking, but louder idle noise with AAM turned on. Also to note is that Seagate harddrives have very little difference between AAM on and AAM off, wheras the IBM's are MUCH quieter in seek with AAM on. With AAM on the seeks are fairly quiet though.

-Ken

thanks Gxcad, im looking for a replacement for my 40gb D740X which, even with AAM set to 'quiet' and inside a Silentdrive enclosure, still sounds like a woodpecker trying to escape from my case.

so its between the cuda IV and the 120GXP. even though i hate seek noise, my main concern has to be idle whine, so i guess ill go for the seagate.

Seagate's expressed aim is to minimize the difference between idle and seek because they realize that changes in noise level are audible and annoying. I agree with Ken that the noise reduction software affects IBM drive seek noise more than it does the Seagate, but the overall audibility of the IBM even at idle is higher, and it whines, unlike the 'cuda, so there is no real contest. That whine is the killer for most of us (who have higher freq hearing).

The seek noise of any drive can be minimized by:
1) decoupled mounting. Elastic suspension or NoVibes work best; a bed of soft foam is good, too.
2) acoustically absorbent or blocking material all around the drive. This has to be balanced with the need to keep the drive cool enough (under 50C)

What are the steps to adjusting the AAM on the Barracuda IV?
I assume you need special software?

I think you can use the IBM Feature Tool for that, not 100% sure on it though.

It could at the very least let you view your AAM settings on the seagate (I didn't change them on mine, since I liked having it set to the quietest level).
But if you only want to lower it on yours (assuming you have one), don't bother, it's already set at it's minimum.

i use this third party one, works on any AAM capable drive i think...

http://www.zdnetindia.com/downloads/info/6759089.html

Red dawn the IBM feature tool scans your HDD's and then won't install if u don't have a IBM drive detected there's a bit of software on the web called Abacus Acoustic Management software out there but it only works on 9x/ME boxes, also the Intel application accerlator works in some intel chipsets as well [url]ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/4625/eng/iaa222_enu.exe
[/url] good luck with it

oh yeah and this is the URL for the Maxtor AAM utlity, took me AGES to find it the US site doesn't have it listed anywhere anymore http://www.maxtor.ab.pl/down/amset.zip u need a boot disk to run it off hopefully it'll let me run off a boot cd

Oh all right, didn't know that quokked, sorry.

I just *assumed* it would work for him, since it worked for me, but I stand corrected.

Just let me ask you one thing, it is still possible to change AAM values with it on Seagate drives though? That is, if you have an ibm drive there in the first place to let it install.

don't know actually I've only got a lonely maxtor in my box, buuuuttt that link teklan posted has a utility that reads pretty much any drive that has AAM installed and according to what I could extract from that readme in it it works on any drive

Hi. I would like to share my experience with modifying the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) setting on my Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 40GB model ST340016A hard disk.

I used the IBM tool suggested to me by quokked in this thread which can be downloaded here from this webpage.

I have no IBM hard disks in my system. The Barracuda is the only disk and attached to the ATA100 Promise controller on my Asus A7V mainboard. The software created a boot disk for me. I booted with the disk and was able to use the dos based GUI to test and set the AAM settings on the Barracuda. When I tried the "view temperature" option the GUI told me I could not do so because it was not an IBM disk so the software is aware of the make of your disk and should work on non-IBM disks. I tried the IBM tool before trying the one mentioned by teklan as I figured IBM would have better quality control.

The 'loud' mode on the Barracuda is noticably louder, but that's the seek speed, not the "idle whine" which I figure is what's really annoying as the idle whine is high pitched. The louder seek sound is low pitched; sounds a little like popping corn in a microwave.

I tested my 'loud' mode disk in the Sandra benchmarking software and the disk did show an increase in performance of 15% based on Sandra's results.