Acoustic software for Maxtor Drives

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Rusty075
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Acoustic software for Maxtor Drives

Post by Rusty075 » Fri Sep 13, 2002 12:03 am

I stumbled upon this utility from Maxtor for adjusting the acoustic settings on Maxtor HDD's.

AMSET Utility
Acoustic Management adjusts the speed of the head seeks, reducing the ambient sound level during the normal operation of Maxtor hard drives. This does not affect sound levels for power on operations. The performance of the drive is affected when Acoustic Management is enabled.
I installed it on my Maxtor drive, a 40G DiamondMax Plus D740X. It appears that these drives come from the factory with the acoustic management set to its midrange setting, on but fast. Adjusting it to its quietest setting made my drive marginally quieter. My drive was already nearly silent, being suspended, sandwiched, and sidesinked, so the adjustment may make a bigger impact in a drive that is installed normally. The performance hit from the adjustment seems to be about nil, less the 2% according to my benchmarks in PCMark2002.

hyum
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Post by hyum » Fri Sep 13, 2002 12:08 pm

most major drive vendors supply software that can change the acoustic performance of your drive.

however, usually, usually only the newer (last 1-2 years) drives or drives with newer firmware support the acoustic management.

cjp
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Post by cjp » Mon Sep 16, 2002 5:05 am

Am I right in thinking that such software only effects seek noise and not spun up idle noise?

teklan
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Post by teklan » Mon Sep 16, 2002 6:15 am

cjp wrote:Am I right in thinking that such software only effects seek noise and not spun up idle noise?
yes AMSET does only affect seek noise, at least it would if it actually worked on a D740X. the utility has NO EFFECT on this drive because it is actually developed by Quantum. However, when used on a Maxtor drive such as a Diamondmax Plus 60 the reduction in seek noise is dramatic!

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Post by Rusty075 » Mon Sep 16, 2002 6:36 pm

teklan:
yes AMSET does only affect seek noise, at least it would if it actually worked on a D740X. the utility has NO EFFECT on this drive because it is actually developed by Quantum
According to Maxtor:
The AMSET.EXE utility enables, disables, and sets levels for the Acoustic Management (operating sound levels) for the following hard drive families (and newer) ONLY:

- DiamondMax Plus 40 UDMA/100
- DiamondMax 60 UDMA/100
- DiamondMax VL 30 UDMA/100
- D540X
- D740X
I'm not sure where you're getting your info from, but AMSET does indeed work on the D740X. It may be time to update your information.

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Post by MikeC » Mon Sep 16, 2002 8:55 pm

I found that the similar IBM HDD noise utility works on a number of non-IBM drives as well.

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Post by Rusty075 » Mon Sep 16, 2002 11:21 pm

That's interesting. The Maxtor one searches the ide channels for supported drives, and won't run on any none Maxtors. I tried it on my data server. Perhaps I'll try the IBM app, see if that does anything.

teklan
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Post by teklan » Tue Sep 17, 2002 2:02 am

after using the utility to silence my Diamondmax Plus 60 i was so impressed i couldnt wait to try it on my new D740X. i was absolutely horrified when the seek noise stayed exactly the same no matter what mode i set it to! then i found this HDD roundup at digit-life.com ....

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/hddreview0112/
digit-life.com wrote: Furthermore, as the Maxtor D740X was developed by Quantum, changing of an acoustic level with the AMSET utility doesn't affect an access time, and therefore, test results. Probably, integration of the Maxtor Acoustic Management technology into the Quantum product wasn't successful.

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Post by Rusty075 » Tue Sep 17, 2002 9:28 am

The utility definitely makes a difference in the sound of my D740X, although not as much as I had hoped. I noticed that the article is from December 2001, only 2 months after the D740X was officially launched. Perhaps there's been a firmware update to them since then. My drive has a manufacture date of May '02. When did you get your's?

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Post by MikeC » Tue Sep 17, 2002 9:34 am

Just to let you know, a link to the IBM HDD "feature tool", as it is called, has been posted under the Software section in Links on the main SPCR site. :D

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