Western Digital's quiet 1000 EADS but 640 AALS does Doo Wap
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 1:35 am
Well, guys, I do have a question, but of course, the action packed story is first.
Noticing that I had the need for some safe and centralized storage, I spotted an ECS atom board. . . and was intrigued because there's no Realtek aboard. I already owned a smallish case and an APFC power supply. Its the little Forton supply and mostly quiet.
Because of heat, I replaced a older maxtor with the 1TB EADS (the Fast green drive).
Also, the power supply is on the bottom of this mini server. Very slow fans blow air into the case. The power supply cools only itself.
Due to luck or the Intel Ich7, my Western Digital green drive didn't do the parkparkparkparkpark thing at all. Just in case, there's a utility named WDIDLE3 (a search term) and newer drives are reported to respond to: Wdidle3 /S255
Factory default for laptop drives is Wdidle3 /s80
and the disable command for older drives is Wdidle3 /D.
I'm unable to test this for you because mine doesn't exibit the nervous parking.
This drive idles quietly and runs cold. Nice. However the seek noise was obnoxious. I used the Hitachi Feature Tools and that slowed it terribly.
Next, I turned off AAM. Then I set AAM to Maximum. Lastly, I set AAM to 192. Check out 80 megabytes per second and no noises.
For folks wishing to use this in a raid, the western digital software is named WDTLER. That software turns off the inbuilt error compensation and allows the Raid card to control it. The methodology of setting this is counterintuitive.
For multi-drive raid setups, TLER On knocks out the hard drive's inbuilt error compensation in 7 seconds or less in order to allow the RAID controller to perfom this task, its the RAID setting and not for use otherwise.
A desktop PC uses TLER Off, which allows the drive an endless amount of time to perform error correction, lasting until it has succeeded in that important task. The two drives listed here come with TLER OFF (desktop PC setting).
--next drive--
My 640 gigabyte AALS is part of a test to see about making a hot-rod version of the mini server, for desktop PC use. AALS and the EADS are so similar. Its the AALS drive that was chosen for the desktop build because of its extra speed.
Noise is where they're not similar. AALS seeks quiet out of the box. There's no grinding. Instead, it makes the most obnoxious random sounds, like caterwauling "Whooo Hoo!!! Meow? Balarbababa?? Shoo Be DO!!!" yes, just like house cats attempting to sing Doo Wap. lol!
Its nuts!
I'd sure appreciate some help with that one.
Sure, I'll try the Hitachi Feature Tool (for Western Digital, first save AAM at maximum, and then save 192), because I haven't tried it yet.
For the acid test on reliability, this AALS is connected to a Nforce 4xx series onboard sata. The bios section for it is on factory default. Noticably, it will error slightly if the raid feature is disabled.
On factory default there is no error. That's rare for Nforce 4xx.
Quality control = passed.
I hope its not yet more Nvidia+AM2 inspired glitches that cause the noises. In any case, there aren't any data errors.
The heat output difference between AALS (black with 32mb cache) and EADS (green with 32mb cache) is insignificant. Therefore the power consumption is insignificant as well. Write speed of AALS is 89MBs while EADS is 80MBs and both are truly excellent figures.
Sure, EADS does run cooler and that's helpful if you want to go fanless. EADS (green with 32mb cache) needs no assistance in cooling.
As for sounds, there aren't much. We're quite sensitive to sounds here at FidelityForce (handmade hifi audio). The EADS is a lower pitch, which is more seemly. Fanless implies lots of passive vents, and so the green drive's quiet and unobtrusive sound is preferred.
No solution yet for the 640 gigabyte AALS (Caviar Black with 32mb cache) "Yippie! Meow? Doo Wap!" type sounds, although they're not loud--they're very quiet. Its the freakiest noise to be coming out of a computer. Its also random. The sound seems to be a hetrodyne of some sort.
Its at it again.
At first, this was scary. Now that the drive has passed the 10 day mark, its not so scary. Its more funny than annoying, but we really mustn't have extraneous sounds in our shop. Here, we build audio equipment the old fashioned way, using ears. Those must not become accostomed to odd sounds, therefore the shop must have either music or silence (nothing else).
Planning to try:
Intel Ich8 + G31 + Conroe
Hitichi Feature Tool AAM at 192
Did I miss anything?
And really, how do I stop the Doo Wap?
Thanks!!
Noticing that I had the need for some safe and centralized storage, I spotted an ECS atom board. . . and was intrigued because there's no Realtek aboard. I already owned a smallish case and an APFC power supply. Its the little Forton supply and mostly quiet.
Because of heat, I replaced a older maxtor with the 1TB EADS (the Fast green drive).
Also, the power supply is on the bottom of this mini server. Very slow fans blow air into the case. The power supply cools only itself.
Due to luck or the Intel Ich7, my Western Digital green drive didn't do the parkparkparkparkpark thing at all. Just in case, there's a utility named WDIDLE3 (a search term) and newer drives are reported to respond to: Wdidle3 /S255
Factory default for laptop drives is Wdidle3 /s80
and the disable command for older drives is Wdidle3 /D.
I'm unable to test this for you because mine doesn't exibit the nervous parking.
This drive idles quietly and runs cold. Nice. However the seek noise was obnoxious. I used the Hitachi Feature Tools and that slowed it terribly.
Next, I turned off AAM. Then I set AAM to Maximum. Lastly, I set AAM to 192. Check out 80 megabytes per second and no noises.
For folks wishing to use this in a raid, the western digital software is named WDTLER. That software turns off the inbuilt error compensation and allows the Raid card to control it. The methodology of setting this is counterintuitive.
For multi-drive raid setups, TLER On knocks out the hard drive's inbuilt error compensation in 7 seconds or less in order to allow the RAID controller to perfom this task, its the RAID setting and not for use otherwise.
A desktop PC uses TLER Off, which allows the drive an endless amount of time to perform error correction, lasting until it has succeeded in that important task. The two drives listed here come with TLER OFF (desktop PC setting).
--next drive--
My 640 gigabyte AALS is part of a test to see about making a hot-rod version of the mini server, for desktop PC use. AALS and the EADS are so similar. Its the AALS drive that was chosen for the desktop build because of its extra speed.
Noise is where they're not similar. AALS seeks quiet out of the box. There's no grinding. Instead, it makes the most obnoxious random sounds, like caterwauling "Whooo Hoo!!! Meow? Balarbababa?? Shoo Be DO!!!" yes, just like house cats attempting to sing Doo Wap. lol!
Its nuts!
I'd sure appreciate some help with that one.
Sure, I'll try the Hitachi Feature Tool (for Western Digital, first save AAM at maximum, and then save 192), because I haven't tried it yet.
For the acid test on reliability, this AALS is connected to a Nforce 4xx series onboard sata. The bios section for it is on factory default. Noticably, it will error slightly if the raid feature is disabled.
On factory default there is no error. That's rare for Nforce 4xx.
Quality control = passed.
I hope its not yet more Nvidia+AM2 inspired glitches that cause the noises. In any case, there aren't any data errors.
The heat output difference between AALS (black with 32mb cache) and EADS (green with 32mb cache) is insignificant. Therefore the power consumption is insignificant as well. Write speed of AALS is 89MBs while EADS is 80MBs and both are truly excellent figures.
Sure, EADS does run cooler and that's helpful if you want to go fanless. EADS (green with 32mb cache) needs no assistance in cooling.
As for sounds, there aren't much. We're quite sensitive to sounds here at FidelityForce (handmade hifi audio). The EADS is a lower pitch, which is more seemly. Fanless implies lots of passive vents, and so the green drive's quiet and unobtrusive sound is preferred.
No solution yet for the 640 gigabyte AALS (Caviar Black with 32mb cache) "Yippie! Meow? Doo Wap!" type sounds, although they're not loud--they're very quiet. Its the freakiest noise to be coming out of a computer. Its also random. The sound seems to be a hetrodyne of some sort.
Its at it again.
At first, this was scary. Now that the drive has passed the 10 day mark, its not so scary. Its more funny than annoying, but we really mustn't have extraneous sounds in our shop. Here, we build audio equipment the old fashioned way, using ears. Those must not become accostomed to odd sounds, therefore the shop must have either music or silence (nothing else).
Planning to try:
Intel Ich8 + G31 + Conroe
Hitichi Feature Tool AAM at 192
Did I miss anything?
And really, how do I stop the Doo Wap?
Thanks!!