Maxtor harddrive users read this!

[CHHAS]

I've just stumbled upon this :
http://www.maxtor.com/technology/technotes/21007.html

on Maxtor's site.

Appearantly all newer Maxtor Drives are shipped with reduced (or should that be increased? in any case impaired) seek times in order to reduce noise.

I'll have to try this when I get home (after a nice backup )

I'll post results when done.

[This message has been edited by CHHAS (edited 24 July 2000).]

[SteveC]

Thanks! I'm not a Maxtor user, but I know people who are.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Rice-Boy]

Kewl..

If you don't mind can you post your benchmark after doing this and how much louder the drive has become?

I have 2 30gig 7200rpm maxtor drive and would love to give this a try..



------------------
Got-Rice?
P3-600E o/c 852
G400 Max
256 PC133
2x30gig Maxtor 7200rpm

[CHHAS]

Ok, I came home early from work, I was really looking forward to boosting my seek times

I made a full backup with Ghost, it took almost 15 minutes, way too long IMO

This being completed I made benchmarks with WinBench 99:

Access Time : 10,1
Bus : 5010
High End : 16300
AVS/Express 3.4 : 11100
Frontpage 98 : 47500
Microstation SE : 18700
Photoshop 4.0 : 9480
Premiere 4.2 : 13900
Sound Forge 4.0 : 33300
Visual C++ 5.0 : 17200


Then ... with excitement pounding in my veins (ok I admit it I have no life ) I booted from a bootdisk and entered the commands:

 AMSET /off

I though, well the hell with noise, I want SPEED, and pressed

enter

Much to my dismay I was greeted with the message

Drive does not support Acoustic Management

God damn Maxtor @#¤¤!!&%@@!

My drive is on their list

I'm pissed off !

Ahh well, no point complaining about it, but I was really looking forward to this

I hope some of you will succeed and gain the improvements I was hoping for

[Kruzin]

I also got:
"Drive does not support Acoustic Management"
on my 30 gig 7200 rpm DiamondMax...

[LAMFDTK]

I have 5 Maxtors and when the 100 UDMA upgrade was announced I bought a drive on the "List" and it didn't upgrade! I just bought an IBM Today.

[Brian R.]

Might be their software utility has a glitch and they will post an upgrade which works with your drives...???

[xortam]

What will increasing the seek time do to the life expectancy of the drive? Surely, shorten it somewhat. Is it significant? Is there any change in the Warranty? I haven't used newer Maxtor drives (still have Maxtor 340 MB SCSI in my old system), so I'm just asking out of curiosity and to give you something to think about.

[CHHAS]

Well, I've mailed Maxtor and await their reply.

Regarding the warranty issue, Maxtor has put a disclaimer in the description stating that they cannot be held liable for any damages ... yadda, yadda, yadda ....

I doubt that Maxtor would have the utility on their site if it posed any serious threat to their drives.

And they do offer support for the utility, I guess it's a bit like the overclocking utilities for graphics cards ... You want to tweak it for speed, you run the risk ...

[Brian R.]

Actually, it sounds to me more like their "underclocking" their drives to make them quieter. Running them at their design speed should be fine, unless they actually "underclocked" them for another unstated reason (such as reliability problems) and are using the explanation of reducing noise pollution as an cover. If they don't get much louder after tweaking, then their explanation is questionable.

[Taz]

Uhm, I remember Maxtor when they used to be known as MiniScribe, I didn't think much of them then and I've yet to be convinced by them since. I think I'll stick to Quantum, maybe not the fastest but definitely the most reliable drives I've used. I'm sure there's probably someone who's had completely the opposite experience

[CHHAS]

Actually, I find the noise explanation quite believable as the drive is VERY quiet, and considering the margin the DM40+ had to the competition when it appeared (before Quamtum LM and IBM GXP75) didn't require them to sacrifice silence for performance.

As you can probably read, I like my Maxtor drive a lot

I just hope that they fixes the utility so I can tweak even more performance from my disk

I really cannot bear that my harddrive is the only part of my PC that is not overclocked (well, ok my CD-rom drive isn't either, but I'm working on that ...)

[MURCer]

I also have a 30G Maxtor (53073U6), according to the readme it's supported, yet I get the same error message. I don't care about the seek noise at all, in fact I like to hear when the drive is busy. I wish it could reduce the engine noise. Kinda reminds me of the Amiga days where you had the same kind of utils to reduce floppy drive noise, and make it faster at the same time.

Actually in the readme the drive is not included in the list, but on the webpage it is.

[This message has been edited by MURCer (edited 24 July 2000).]

[Brian R.]

CHHAS - I'm more inclined to believe they sacrificed performance for an increase in reliability than for a decrease in noise. MTBF is an important selling point, not noise level.

[CHHAS]

Brian R.:

Hmm, you've got a point there.

MURCER:

I've heard about some Maxtor DM40+ drives making a lot of 'engine noise' as you call it, I was quite worried myself when I ordered mine, luckily mine's whisper quiet, the seeks are barely aubible and I cannot hear any idle noise.