Harddrive noise

[ejbengine]

I have a Western Digital drive (WDC WD2500JS-00NCB1) and the noise levels during reads/writes is pretty annoying.Is there anything I could do to reduce or mask the noise levels? The spec says Acoustic Management is not activated.How much performance hit would I get by enabling this?

Here's the full spec of the disk :

SCSI General Properties
Controller : 1
Bus : 0
Target ID : 0
Logical Unit No. : 0

General Capabilities
Channel : Master
Type : ATA
Removable : No
Model : WDC WD2500JS-00NCB1
Revision : 10.02E02
Serial Number : WD-WCANK7956280
ATA/ATAPI Approved Version : 7.00
Cache Size : 8MB

Drive Geometry
CHS Geometry : 16383 x 16 x 63
CHS Total Sectors : 16514064
LBA Total Sectors : 488397168
Number of ECC Bytes : 50
Capacity : 233GB

Translation Mode Disk Geometry
CHS Geometry : 30401 x 255 x 63
Bytes Per Sector : 512 byte(s)
Capacity : 233GB

Partitions Information
Partition 1 : MBR Boot IFS-NTFS 86GB
Partition 0 : MBR Ext 146GB
Partition 2 : MBR IFS-NTFS 146GB

Logical Drives
Logical Drive : C:
Logical Drive : E:

Properties
IORDY Support : Yes
IORDY Disableable : Yes
LBA Support : Yes
DMA Support : Yes

Features
S.M.A.R.T Support : Yes
Security Support : Yes
Power Management Support : Yes
ACPI Power Management Support : No
Power-up in Standby : Yes
Packet Command Interface : No
Removable Media : No
Look-Ahead Buffer : Yes
Write-Back Cache : Yes
Host Protect Area : Yes
Microcode Update : Yes
Acoustic Management : Yes
48-bit LBA : Yes
Device Config Overlay : Yes

Active Features
S.M.A.R.T Enabled : Yes
Security Enabled : No
Power Management Enabled : Yes
Power-up in Standby Enabled : No
Look-Ahead Buffer Enabled : Yes
Write-Back Cache Enabled : Yes
Host Protect Area Enabled : Yes
Acoustic Management Enabled : No

S.M.A.R.T Information
Version : 1.01
ATA Commands Support : Yes
ATAPI Commands Support : Yes
S.M.A.R.T Commands Support : Yes

S.M.A.R.T Data
Raw Read Error Rate (01) : 0 (Threshold 51; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Spin-up Time (03) : 2425 (Threshold 21; Worst 251; Maximum 238)
Start/Stop Count (04) : 125 (Threshold 0; Worst 100; Maximum 100)
Re-Allocated Sector Count (05) : 0 (Threshold 140; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Seek Error Rate (07) : 0 (Threshold 51; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Power-On Time Count (09) : 2841 (Threshold 0; Worst 97; Maximum 97)
Spin Retry Count (0A) : 0 (Threshold 51; Worst 100; Maximum 100)
Calibration Retry Count (0B) : 0 (Threshold 51; Worst 100; Maximum 100)
Power Cycle Count (0C) : 123 (Threshold 0; Worst 100; Maximum 100)
TBE : 41 (Threshold 45; Worst 59; Maximum 48)
Drive Temperature (C2) : 41 (Threshold 0; Worst 109; Maximum 98)
Re-Allocated Data Count (C4) : 0 (Threshold 0; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Pending Sector Count (C5) : 0 (Threshold 0; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Un-Correctable Sector Count (C6) : 0 (Threshold 0; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
CRC Error Count (C7) : 0 (Threshold 0; Worst 200; Maximum 200)
Write Error Rate (C8) : 0 (Threshold 51; Worst 200; Maximum 200)

Environment Monitor(s)
Disk Temperature : 41.0°C / 105.8°F

Transfer Modes Support
I/O Queue Depth : 32
Block Size : 16
Width : 16-bit
Maximum PIO Mode : PIO-4
Maximum DMA MW Mode : MWDMA-2
Maximum UDMA Mode : UDMA-6

Transfer Modes Active
Current Block Transfer : 16
Current Active Mode : UDMA-5

Performance Tips
Warning 3104 : Current mode not optimal. Check settings.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

 

[acidrain]

Not sure how to lessen the noise but i do know that WD are generally noisy when reading/writing. I have an external and does the same thing ( except the difference is ive come to live with it )

 

[GTi]

My Seagate external 250gb HDD is very noisy and I am trying to live with it,strangely only when reading from it, writing to it, it's very quiet. I don't think there is much u can do about the noise.

 

[GreatBigMouth]

Turn up the music.

 

[BiteMe]

between 5 and 10% drop if acoustic management is enabled.
wd do a boot cd which will enable this
i dont think you would really notice the drop in performance. it is a trade-off vs seek noise, and if the seek noise bothers you already then the drop in performance will be a good compromise for the silence

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
get the "cd image" listed...

 

[ejbengine]

I also found this freeware utility called silentdrive from
http://www.rt-sw.de/en/freeware/freeware.html , that completely killed the noise and I haven't noticed any performance drop.My drive is silent now...even during heavy read/writes . Maybe you guys can also try it.