# AAM for Western Digital drives?



## mln01

I am replacing a failed hard drive in a Series 1 Philips HDR-212 with a new 160MB Western Digital Caviar SE. I've read in this forum that I should use an AAM utility to set the drive to quiet mode but it isn't clear to me how and when I do this. Plus, WD doesn't offer an AAM utililty at its Web site.

First, is there another manufacturer's AAM utility that will work on the WD drive? I thought I saw a link to Seagate or Hitachi while browsing the forums last week but I couldn't find it again today.

Second, if I am setting up the new drive with MFStools on a machine that otherwise runs Windows XP when and how do I use the AAM utility?

Thanks,

Mike
Charlotte


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## classicsat

I'd use the AAM utility before imaging the drive.


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## 1283

Hitachi Feature Tool: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

It doesn't matter whether you change the AAM mode before or after.


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## funtoupgrade

Nobody has yet answered the main question as to whether the AAM program will work with any manufacturer's drive or only with their own.


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## HoosierTivoDaddy

I believe that it works on Westerns and Hitachi. Does not work on Seagate and I don't know about Maxtor.


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## 1283

HoosierTivoDaddy said:


> Does not work on Seagate


because Seagate does not support AAM.


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## ronsch

I've never used AAM on WD and have never needed to. I have three TiVo's within a few feet of each other and only about eight feet from my easy chair using four WD drives and I never hear any of them.


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## Pauli

ronsch said:


> I've never used AAM on WD and have never needed to. I have three TiVo's within a few feet of each other and only about eight feet from my easy chair using four WD drives and I never hear any of them.


Perhaps you should get your hearing checked.

I have a recent 160GB WD drive in my DirecTiVo unit with AAM activated AND sitting on soft Sorbothane strips and I can still hear it's seek noise from about 10 feet away (very faintly). I also have another one of these drives without AAM enabled in my computer and the seek noise is pretty noticeable.


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## BobCamp1

funtoupgrade said:


> Nobody has yet answered the main question as to whether the AAM program will work with any manufacturer's drive or only with their own.


The Hitachi tool works on Samsung drives. I think AAM is a S.M.A.R.T. command, so it is supposed to be the same for all the different hard drives.


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## Micosm

c3 said:


> because Seagate does not support AAM.


Because all newer Seagates are shipped w/ AAM automatically enabled and they don't allow you to disable it.


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## 1283

Micosm said:


> Because all newer Seagates are shipped w/ AAM automatically enabled and they don't allow you to disable it.


That's 100% wrong information.


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## 1283

Pauli said:


> Perhaps you should get your hearing checked.


This is why the same drive would sound quiet to some people and noisy to other people.


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## ronsch

Maybe because I'm rarely in the easy chair without the TV on?


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## ronsch

Then again, I can stand right next to all three and barely hear any seeks.


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## 1283

ronsch said:


> Then again, I can stand right next to all three and barely hear any seeks.


Sometimes not being able to hear well is a blessing. You can use whatever hard drive you want, among other things.


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## Micosm

c3 said:


> That's 100% wrong information.


Sorry about that, I remembered reading that the 7200.7 PATA drives came locked in quiet mode and for some reason I posted before reading very much about the 7200.8 and 7200.9 models. Apparently Seagate's using a proprietary internal acoustic manager that adjusts itself in SATA drives depending on your chipset and controller. The general consensus seems to be that the newer PATA Seagates are locked into performance mode. Either way, there seems to be a form of acoustic management present in the firmware, but no way for users to toggle between quiet and performance modes.


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## 1283

Seek noise can be reduced by slowing down the movement of the head assembly, which decreases performance. That should be independent of the PATA/SATA interface and the host controller. Earlier Seagates supported AAM, but they took it out due to patent issues. For the same 7200.7 family, 120GB and 160GB are generally much quieter than 200GB for some reason, all without AAM. I tried Seagate 7200.7 200GB in my TiVo and could not stand it. Hopefully with Seagate's purchase of Maxtor, they'll put AAM back. 5-year warranty and AAM would be an excellent combination.


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## jshorr

Is there ever any NOTICEABLE performance issue when turning accoustic management to quiet on a TiVo drive? I am interested in making a new Western Digital 160GB quieter. Would I have any problems with the TiVo turning it all the way down? Thanks.


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## jshorr

Also can you use the Hitachi tool on a Maxtor drive, and if so will it turn it any lower than the maxtor AMSET utility?


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## 1283

Performance shouldn't be an issue, even for high definition streams.


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## jshorr

c3 said:


> Performance shouldn't be an issue, even for high definition streams.


Cool, would you think that would be the case even if the drive was a 5400RPM/2MB cache drive? Still should be ok?


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## jshorr

I ran the amset /quiet on a Maxtor drive, then loaded up the Hitachi Tools....the amset /quiet had set the acoustic level to 192, not the minimum of 128. I want as quiet as possible but I am also ultra paranoid of screwing up my recording or playback if the performance was set too low and I was recording, playing, and possibly doing a transfer to another unit or something like that. What do you guys normally set the level to using the Hitachi tool? Thanks!


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## blindlemon

I always set it to the minimum on Samsung drives. 

Performance is not an issue in a TiVo, especially as AMM's only effect is to (marginally) reduce the seek speeds whereas most of the work in a TiVo is reading/writing large sequential video streams.

5400rpm drives are preferred for TiVo use as they run cooler than 7200rpm drives and neither rpm nor cache size have any effect on performance for the same reason as above.


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## 1283

Setting it to 128 (versus 192) may not make the drive any quieter. The drive may choose to implement two settings only. The Hitachi tool has a seek test, so you can try different settings to check if you hear any difference.


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