Acoustic Management

As hard disk manufacturers rack up the high speed scores, it is inevitable that the noise level should also go up. Barring any improvements in acoustic damping, hard disks will become noisier as manufacturers make them run faster. Increasing the spindle speed from the usual 5400 rpm to the faster 7200 rpm spindle speed requires a more powerful motor. This not only means increased heat production but also a higher noise level.

However, while spinning the platters at a higher speed increases the noise level, this is not as evident as the sound produced by a seeking hard disk head. To reduce the seek times from 10.5 ms to less than 9.0 ms, the hard disk heads have to seek faster. This results in loud clicks and other annoying noises which are much louder than the hum produced by the spindle motor.

The obvious solution would be to improve the hard disk's internal acoustic damping mechanism. However, such engineering measures are expensive and are restricted by the confined space of the 3.5" form factor. For these and other reasons, Maxtor decided to rely on more than just passive acoustic damping measures.

They came up with an active acoustic management technology, simply named "Acoustic Management". Built into selected desktop drive models, this technology specifically targets the loud clicks produced by the faster seek heads. How do they do this?

Maxtor's Acoustic Management Technology

Maxtor's Acoustic Management technology aims to reduce the seek noises by a very simple and direct method - reduce the seek speed. By reducing the seek speed, they can actually reduce the associated seek noises to just a single dBA louder than the noise of the spindle motor. Now, that's really some reduction in noise level...

But as you can deduce, this reduces the hard disk's seek performance. Thankfully, Maxtor provides a utility that allows you to set and change the levels of acoustic management. Although this utility has been out for some time, I didn't really take note of it until the Maxtor page dedicated to it was updated. While checking to see what was changed, I noticed that Maxtor, by default, enabled acoustic management for all shipping acoustic management-equipped drives. This means all Maxtor drives that support acoustic management have been set to run with slower seeks right from the factory!

I consulted Maxtor and they confirmed the fact. They also informed me that what was mentioned on Maxtor's site as their Acoustic Management is actually called the Maxtor Silent Store technology. However, I'm not sure if Silent Store is what they have been calling their Acoustic Management technology all along and not just something they just made up after all the sudden interest in it! :)