Diznario's post about upgrading the empeg's disk drive got me to thinking...

What would be the quietest disk drive I could get for the empeg? There are (rare) times when I'd want it to be as quiet as possible. I don't think I need anything bigger than 40 gig at the moment.

Any suggestions?

Incidentally, my current setup is a 40gb Fujitsu MHS2040AT as the primary drive and a 10gb Travelstar DJSA-210 as the secondary drive. I actually don't need the second drive (total free space on the player is over 23gb) and I'm thinking of removing it just for the noise and heat reduction.

So I guess my questions are:

1. Is there any web site that lists the audible output of laptop disk drives in a list?

2. Does anyone think that I could get a noticeable improvment in noise level if I replaced the Fujitsu with something quieter?

3. Do any of these laptop drives have "quiet operation" modes that can be set from the operating system? Does the kernel already try to do that anyhow?

Couple thoughts:

empeg enclosure should = quiet?

www.tomshardware.com has discussed noise before, but probably not "all the time". Worth a look in the notebook drive comparisons under their "storage" reviews.

I've had limited experience on Fuji's vs. others - my Compaq X1050 notebook. I swapped the 40GB Fujitsu 4200 RPM drive for a 50GB Hitachi 7200 RPM. The Fujitsu was MUCH quieter at any time (Thankfully I don't care, and the performance upgrade was all I could ask for).

I haven't seen it through the O/S before, but I do remember old IBM drives (I think there are others) that had a quiet mode you could set through commands used when booting from their special floppy disk. I'm pretty sure those settings were hard set and stayed with the drive, even if you moved it from one PC to another.

The newer Fujitsu drives (I recently added a 30/40GB (?) drive to someone's Empeg for them) are quieter than the fans in my docks. Very very quiet.

Many drives also implement the "Acoustic feature set", which permits the O/S to set the tradeoff point between noise and seek performance. This can make a HUGE difference on desktop drives. Not so sure about laptop drives, or whether any of them actually implement it. "hdparm -I" will tell about those that do implement it, and "hdparm -Annn" is used to select the desired sound level (drive remembers it permanently once set).

Cheers

empeg:/empeg/bin# hdparm -l
bash: hdparm: command not found

Well, if you *REALLY* want it to be quiet, you could always get one of these.



OK, so maybe it doesn't quite hold as much as a conventional drive...

The 2 30 GB fujitsus that came with my mk2a 60 are not very loud, but next to the 2 80 GB Toshibas I replaced them with they seem much louder. I guess the cheapest way to see how loud your drives are is to compare them with another empeg.

Well, if you *REALLY* want it to be quiet

Don't tell me, a water cooled Empeg, plumbed into the radiator.
Fine for all, except 2CV owners (Who wouldn't hear above the engine noise anyway!

You could probably find the Empeg binary for hdparm using BBS search..

Here's a copy of the latest release, for running on the empeg:

http://rtr.ca/hdparm.empeg

Ooops.. I gave the wrong option for setting acoustic parameters. "-A" is for read-ahead. The Acoustic stuff is -Mnnn.

The 80GB drive (one from Paul) recommends "-M128"

Cheers

Cool, thanks! It runs!

However, I can't get it to tell me anything about the drive. Every time I run it like you showed, I just get the list of parameters. I think it wants me to spec the drive, but I don't know what to put in there. If I put in "drive0" or "hda" it says that those things don't exist or are not supported. Am I doing something wrong?

Ah, googled it. The correct command is ./hdparm -I /dev/hda

Looking now...

/dev/hda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: FUJITSU MHS2040AT
Serial Number: NL41T2C13G7F
Firmware Revision: 8004
Standards:
Used: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
Supported: 6 5 4 3
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 16383
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 63
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
LBA user addressable sectors: 78140160
device size with M = 1024*1024: 38154 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 40007 MBytes (40 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(cannot be disabled)
bytes avail on r/w long: 4 Queue depth: 1
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Advanced power management level: 128 (0x80)
Recommended acoustic management value: 0, current value: 64
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* READ BUFFER cmd
* WRITE BUFFER cmd
* Host Protected Area feature set
* Look-ahead
* Write cache
* Power Management feature set
Security Mode feature set
* SMART feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH CACHE command
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
SET MAX security extension
SET FEATURES subcommand required to spinup after power up
Power-Up In Standby feature set
* Advanced Power Management feature set
* SMART self-test
* SMART error logging
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
not supported: enhanced erase
30min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0 determined by the jumper
Checksum: correct

Says the recommended acoustic management level is 64 and the current level is 0. From what I understand, the higher the number, the faster the drive goes. So if it's at 0, it's as slow/quiet as it's gonna get, right? Or does 0 mean acoustic management is off all the way and I should set something?

Edit: Wait, I got that backwards. It says recommended 0, current 64. <smacks forehead>

Darn:

./hdparm -M0 /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
setting acoustic management to 0
HDIO_SET_ACOUSTIC failed: Input/output error
HDIO_GET_ACOUSTIC failed: Input/output error

Does anyone know what those errors mean?

Although I have to say, with the 10 removed and my lid fan switched off, the player is a lot quieter than it's ever been. That 40 gig drive is a lot quieter than the travelstar 10. So if I could mess with the acoustic parameters, I might be happy without purchasing anything.

I have the same experience. My original 30GB factory drive is a Fujitsu and is substantially louder than the 40GB Hitachi/IBM Travelstar that I put in.

So much so that if it's fscking I can't tell if it's actually working or has hung for whatever reason when it's checking the Hitachi/IBM.

What does hdparm -M64 /dev/hda do? Same think?

If this also gives an i/o error, then perhaps the kernel is not quite compatible with that feature. If only -M0 gives the error, then try -M1 and other values..

Cheers

Ahh.. hdparm is using a feature not present in the empeg kernel. And oddly enough, it doesn't even need that feature for this. I've placed a revised hdparm.empeg file onto my server (same place as before). Give that one a try and see if it works for you. It will probably still show ONE error, but maybe not TWO errors. You can use "-I" to see whether it's having any effect or not.

Cheers

Cool, your new version works! Did exactly as you said it would: Gave me one error instead of two, but still set the value.

Interestingly, when I set the value to zero, doing hdparm -I doesn't even show the "Recommended Acoustic Management Value" at all, the line is missing from the output. But when I set it to anything nonzero, then the line appears in the output.

I'm going to mess with the settings and see if they make a difference.

THANKS!!!!

Interesting. Although this version of hdparm works, and the drive remembers its setting across power cycles, I can't hear a difference between setting 0, setting 1, and setting 64. There is a certain low frequency pitch to the drive spinning motor, and this does not change with the setting.

Is this setting supposed to only affect the clickety click of the head movement, or does it also affect rotation speed?

The acoustic settings affect the stepper motor which moves the heads. i.e. they affect the clickety click noise only. Basically they slow the down the stepper motor speed particularly when it changes direction.

AFAIK the drives always spin at the same speed.

The hdparm version I gave you, as well as the original version, both treat "0" as "OFF", meaning, "use the drive's default, whatever that is". So the lowest you can go is likely either "1" or "128" (really, try it).

It will only affect seek noise, not rotation speed. So you'll hear a difference, if any, only when the drive is seeking around. On desktop drives, it makes a HUGE difference in grinding levels.

Cheers

Okay, thanks Mark and Shonky. That makes a lot of sense. Setting it to 1 now.