I've been fed up with the search sounds of my harddisk at night for a while now, since that's the only sound my computer makes.
Now I accidentally came across a tweakers.net article about computer silencing and read about silencing harddrives with Hitachi AAM. This software makes your harddrive produce a lot less seeking sounds at the cost of seeking speed. I set my 7200 RPM 160GB drive to the most quiet mode available and my harddisk is almost completely silenced. When I searched for *.txt on my C: disk I barely heard anything.
Even for people who want every bit of performance they can get I recommend this software for their data drive. It really dampens the sound when downloading at night.
The Hitachi AAM is installed by burning the ISO ( http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/ftool_209.iso ) on a CD and booting from the CD. You will get into a BIOS like interface which will let you inspect your harddisks and change several modes, including the AAM. The AAM can be set from very quiet to performance.
For those wanting to have more information on sound/performance impact: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13104
I also did some (at best barely reliable) research myself. I let windows explorer search for *.* on my whole disk at 3 settings: AAM off, AAM on 100% and AAM on 50%. Here are the results:
AAM 100%: 1m46s
AAM 50%: 1m56s
AAM off: 1m51s
I was so suprised with these results I ran the 100% another time, the second result also was 1m46s. Rebooting shouldn't explain the difference, every test was preceded with a restart because you need to boot from CD in order to change the AAM settings.
I also noted that the harddrive in fact only has 2 settings: silent and normal. You can adjust AAM in about 200 steps, but only between step 99 and 100 the sound changes.
Now I accidentally came across a tweakers.net article about computer silencing and read about silencing harddrives with Hitachi AAM. This software makes your harddrive produce a lot less seeking sounds at the cost of seeking speed. I set my 7200 RPM 160GB drive to the most quiet mode available and my harddisk is almost completely silenced. When I searched for *.txt on my C: disk I barely heard anything.
Even for people who want every bit of performance they can get I recommend this software for their data drive. It really dampens the sound when downloading at night.
The Hitachi AAM is installed by burning the ISO ( http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/ftool_209.iso ) on a CD and booting from the CD. You will get into a BIOS like interface which will let you inspect your harddisks and change several modes, including the AAM. The AAM can be set from very quiet to performance.
For those wanting to have more information on sound/performance impact: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13104
I also did some (at best barely reliable) research myself. I let windows explorer search for *.* on my whole disk at 3 settings: AAM off, AAM on 100% and AAM on 50%. Here are the results:
AAM 100%: 1m46s
AAM 50%: 1m56s
AAM off: 1m51s
I was so suprised with these results I ran the 100% another time, the second result also was 1m46s. Rebooting shouldn't explain the difference, every test was preceded with a restart because you need to boot from CD in order to change the AAM settings.
I also noted that the harddrive in fact only has 2 settings: silent and normal. You can adjust AAM in about 200 steps, but only between step 99 and 100 the sound changes.
