Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any brand?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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egalitarian
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:18 pm

Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any brand?

Post by egalitarian » Fri Jun 02, 2017 1:03 pm

Wikipedia states that
AAM is no longer available for Seagate and Western Digital drives
but what about Hitachi? Is it supported by any drive today at all?

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any br

Post by quest_for_silence » Fri Jun 02, 2017 8:57 pm

egalitarian wrote:but what about Hitachi?
Hitachi = Western Digital

egalitarian
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:18 pm

Re: Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any br

Post by egalitarian » Sun Jun 11, 2017 6:19 am

So AAM is dead then. Is there any other way left to reduce seek noise? Special firmwares or any low level settings known?

Olle P
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Location: Sweden

Re: Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any br

Post by Olle P » Fri Jun 16, 2017 1:06 am

To the very vast majority of users this is a non issue.
* All HDDs today are magnitudes quieter than the HDDs available twenty years ago. I have a very hard time hearing anything at all from the HDDs I use. Only one that's about ten years old and mounted in a flimsy external case makes some audible sound during startup and heavy read/write operations.
* When even the small residue of noise is considered too much the solution is to use SSD in the computer and move any required mass storage HDDs to a NAS placed where the sound doesn't matter.

egalitarian
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Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:18 pm

Re: Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any br

Post by egalitarian » Tue Jun 27, 2017 12:04 pm

I understand but most users in this forum are not from this vast majority :) And if you have a 24/7 working server in your living room it's irritating to hear the loud clicking seeking noise. It's really disappointing that my old 2TB WD Green was virtually silent even when seeking with AAM enabled while my current 4TB WD Green is loud and now that I have to upgrade to 8 or 10TB the situation would probably be a lot worse. It's really stupid to have a working technology like AAM for years and then dump it like this.

BTW is there a review somewhere comparing the current crop of disks (8-10TB) in terms of noise?

Gunbuster
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Location: Scotland, UK

Re: Is HDD automatic acoustic management supported by any br

Post by Gunbuster » Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:55 am

egalitarian wrote:... It's really stupid to have a working technology like AAM for years and then dump it like this...
I can confirm that my Ironwolf 4TB are also a bit clicky, not horrific, but enough that the NAS goes off unless I need it. Thankfully the Terramaster supports wake on LAN.

I think its worth mentioning that HDDs are now just cheap mass storage, no longer much of a premium product. Corners are going to be cut. Shame :(

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