Question:
Hard Drive Acoustic Management
Does anyone know what exactly is hard drive acoustic management? I tried setting it to "quiet" with Centrino Hardware Control. Besides it obviously being quieter, what are the advantages/disadvantages of this? Also, is spinning down the hard drive bad for it?
Answer:
Re: Hard Drive Acoustic Management
Acoustic Management is a way to decrease the noise a hard drive creates during read/write operations. Generally, it slows down the read/write head movement and therefore decreases overall performance. I wouldn't recommend using this feature unless your drive is really loud.
Spinngin down the drive is just a way to save power when the drive is not in use. If your system were to sit idle for x number of minutes, the HDD will turn itself off to save battery power or power in general. I personally don't use this feature when on AC (I set it so the HDD never turns off) and there's no issues with my drives. But when on battery, I do set it to turn off the drives after 15mins of inactivity. It'll give me an extra few minutes of power, why not?
-Vb-
Answer:
Re: Hard Drive Acoustic Management
Ah so spinning down is basically like turning off the hard disk, right? Also, does the acoustic management thing affect the rpm?
Answer:
Re: Hard Drive Acoustic Management
Ah so spinning down is basically like turning off the hard disk, right? Also, does the acoustic management thing affect the rpm?
NO, accoustic management doesn't affect RPM. Your drive will always spin at whatever speed it was designed to do. As venombite was saying it affects read/write speed. In fact it has to do more with seeking (which in the end affects read/write speed)