Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[mkmk73]

Forgive my bad English, please

Although I have a Mac, I'm following the evolution of those who have upgraded
firmware on PC DELL ... Unfortunately I have no other way

In parallel forum, of the same argument, (if I have misunderstood), some people say that there is an option in the BIOS called "AAM" = Automatic Acoustic Management ", which seems to be the solution of the problem, combined the firm:

info from:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=14667&view=by_date_ascending&page=5

Apparently there are 3 options:

1) Quiet will make the setting of the AAM (128)) (slower performance)
2) Bypass: (will leave the setting of AAM as it is from the manufacturer)
3) Performance: (will force the setting of the AAM to (254)) - Max performance and louder noise)

My question now is:

AAM variation of this parameter in the PC BIOS HDD DELL reduces performans?

If so, is not a real solution ... but it is only apparent.... Would not it be like having a 5400 rpm at the end?

For example: with my HD (with even the original firmware 002SDM1) make a copy of a file of 1.3 Giga happens in 30 seconds, from one folder to another in the same hard disk.

With the new firmware 005SDM1 with various settings of AAM, what happens?

Have you encountered any slowdowns than before (apart from the elimination of the click noise)?

Message Edited by mkmk73 on 12-16-2009 05:47 PM

[fzabkar]

Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) controls the seek performance by adjusting the aggressiveness of the acceleration and deceleration profiles for the voice coil. If the voice coil starts and stops more smoothly, then the clicking noise during seeking is reduced, but the seek times increase slightly.

You can benchmark your drive using HD Tune. The drive's RPM will remain the same, but the access time may increase slightly.

[mkmk73]

Info from Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_acoustic_management

---

fzabkar wrote:
Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) controls the seek performance by adjusting the aggressiveness of the acceleration and deceleration profiles for the voice coil. If the voice coil starts and stops more smoothly, then the clicking noise during seeking is reduced, but the seek times increase slightly.

You can benchmark your drive using HD Tune. The drive's RPM will remain the same, but the access time may increase slightly.

---

Automatic acoustic management (AAM) is a method for reducing acoustic emanations in AT Attachment (ATA) mass storage devices, such as ATA hard disk drives and ATAPI optical disc drives. Since acoustic emanations are a byproduct of rotational speed, AAM provides a discretionary mechanism for quieting drives by limiting rotational speed and power consumption—in effect, sacrificing performance for quieter operation.

AAM operates independently of advanced power management settings. AAM is an optional feature set for ATA/ATAPI devices; when a device supports AAM, the acoustic management parameters are adjustable through a software or firmware user interface.

INCITS (formerly NCITS) first standardized AAM in the ATA/ATAPI-6 specification.

Message Edited by mkmk73 on 12-18-2009 08:05 AM

[fzabkar]

The vertical position of the laser in an optical drive is controlled by a focus coil, so the laser can always maintain focus over a large range of rotational speeds.

However, a hard drive's heads fly on an air bearing. Since this air bearing is dependent on the rotational speed, this means that the flying height of the heads would be reduced at lower RPMs. My understanding is that the heads are aerodynamically tuned for one particular rotational speed.

Having said that, the following Hitachi white paper states that a drive can rotate at half speed, but only as a power saving measure after the heads have been unloaded and parked on a load/unload ramp.

Power and Acoustic Management:

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/EBB67181ACB207C586256D340075B4DF/$file/WP_PowerAcoustic_25March.pdf

On the subject of "acoustics management", the paper states that "drives can be configured to the silent seek mode. This ... not only makes for a quieter environment for the user, there is also a power benefit. The drive’s power requirement drops significantly during seeking ..."

[ace-a-rue]

my ST9250410AS seagate hard drive was not opening programs very fast, especially SPYBOT (freeware)..it would sit there with the progress bar stalled at about the 85% position with my dual processor almost completely at 100%...it took about a minute and a half to finsih opening the program.

i followed seagull2 instructions and it updated correctly..i kept the 'text' statement in the command line so i would get a confirmation at the conclusion of flashing the firmware: fdlh -m HOLLIDAY -F 0005SDM1.LOD -i ST9250410AS -b -v >text  

now when i open SPYBOT, and it reaches the approximate 85% progress bar position, it only takes about 15 seconds from that point to completely open the program, instead of approximately 90 seconds....presumably, the rotation speed is now at full speed because i did notice about a 10-11 centigrade increase in drive temperature...it was about 30-31C before the flash and now, it is at 40-42C.

i am a happy camper now since i was seriously thinking about replacing this drive; now i don't have to do it...this drive replaced the original drive, which was a WD @ 5400 rpm rotational speed drive.

thank you seagate for the forum but i was hoping you would be more pro-active with providing firmware updates to your retail customers...please re-consider your policy.

[fzabkar]

I believe that the RPM is fixed. If it were allowed to vary, then the air bearing would also vary, with the result that the heads would fly at varying heights.

I wonder if the access speed has increased because Windows has returned the drive to DMA mode after previously downgrading it to PIO mode? A new firmware version may cause Windows to believe that the original drive has been replaced, in which case the default access mode would be DMA, until CRC errors are encountered.

[ace-a-rue]

i guess it doesn't really matter what is happening underneath the hood!...the firmware increases the horsepower under the hood! (wink)

[eyeland]

I have a Seagate momentus 320gb 7200.4 (Model: ST9320423AS, Serial: 5VH05T7B, Firmware: 0002SDM1) and I have downloaded the corresponding firmwareupdate from Lenovo:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-63685
When trying to update I get a message along the lines of "no firmware to update"
I tried running it in both ahci- and compatibility-mode as suggested but to no avail.
As with the dell release I imagine that the issue is: "This firmware update utility may not update a drive without a Lenovo part number(P/N), even its model is identical to a drive in the supported drive list. The drives with Lenovo part numbers include firmwares designed for using with the ThinkPad system."
I am unable to determine if Lenovo and dell have customized the update as I cannot "get into" the lenovo release, if not, then ofc I'll just use the one from dell. (0002 > 0005 right?)

Anyone care to take a look at the lenovo release?

btw, any software available that lets me monitor drive rpm?

Message Edited by eyeland on 01-30-2010 11:24 AM

[fzabkar]

Your 0002SDM1 firmware appears to be a retail version. Lenovo firmware would have a version number such as 0002LVM1. HP and Dell firmware numbers replace the SD with HP and DE, respectively.

According to the following configuration file, model ST9320423AS with 0002SDM1 firmware upgrades to 0005SDM1:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/dell_fw_cfg.txt

You can extract a 2MB hard disc image from the CD ISO using IsoBuster:

http://www.isobuster.com/

If anyone can find a freeware utility to extract the individual file from the IMG, please let us know. My copy of WinImage works on floppies, but not with this particular HD IMG. :-(

[eyeland]

I assume that the retaildrives and the lenovo drives are physically identical appart from the firmware so shouldn't it be possible somehow to force the lenovofirmware onto the retaildrive?