Quieting the Mac Pro Hard Drive

[TheSpaz]

Is there any possible way to turn on "Automatic Acoustic Management" on my 250GB Western Digital SATA drive in my Mac Pro?

Information about AAM here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Acoustic_Management

The thing is... I heard about a Classic OS 9 App that will do this but, as we all know, you can't run Classic on an Intel Mac.

Also, there's a Firmware edit you can do but, that's only available on PPC based Macs because Intel Macs don't use the same type of Firmware.

The other way is to use a Windows App to do it... but, I don't have a copy of Windows (nor do I want a copy of Windows running on my Mac).

Does anyone know of any other ways to turn AAM on? I heard that it helps a lot with the clicking of the drive when Data is being accessed.

 

[tji]

I'm gonna revive this old thread to see if anyone has some suggestions now..

Any ideas for AAM or APM configuration tools in Mac OS X? Like the original author, I found the old tool and openfirmware methods for setting the drive features. But, I can find no way to do it in Mac OS X on an Intel Mac.

 

[trainguy77]

According to the wikipedia article any application will do it for any drive even if its designed for a different company's drive. So what might work is burn a copy of the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ Then try boot from it. Then use the "Feature Tool" (IBM/Hitachi) to change the settings...if that doesn't work take a look at the other programs to see if they can do it. But BACK UP before you try this.

 

[product26]

I have done it in XP to all of my WD drives (5 of them)

keeps the mac pro nice and quiet

 

[tji]

According to the wikipedia article any application will do it for any drive even if its designed for a different company's drive. So what might work is burn a copy of the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ Then try boot from it. Then use the "Feature Tool" (IBM/Hitachi) to change the settings...if that doesn't work take a look at the other programs to see if they can do it. But BACK UP before you try this.

yeah, I actually tried this a couple days ago. I tried the IBM/Hitachi utility, but unfortunately, it just hung on the initial license screen. I found that quite a few DOS boot disks or utilities did not work correctly on the MBP. I also tried the utilities from other vendors, and none worked. I remember the Maxtor tool was specifically looking for a Maxtor drive.

I guess I will try to find standalone Hitachi tools, to see if they work on my simpler DOS boot CD.



I also used the Knoppix Linux LiveCD, to try setting the APM modes via the linux tool "hdparm". That worked, but doesn't seem to have much effect on the noises generated by my drive (it's not clear if the settings get reset on a warm reboot + OS initialization).

 

[product26]

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.withopf.com/tools/aam/&langpair=de|en