Some observations after using Hitachi Feature Tool

[Deckard]

I've had this tool lying around, but never thought of using it.
But just out of curiosity, I have burned the iso image, which you can get from the Hitachi Storage website, on a CD and ran it.

Now the specs:

It's the laptop that you can see in my signature. X31- JGU-2884.

Harddrive is a Hitachi IC25N040ATMR04-0 - 40GB - 4200rpm ATA.

First, I have enabled AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management). Here I chose Enable and not the User Defined option, where you can set the Acoustic level by moving a sliding marker. After checking the other menus, I saw that there was nothing of interest for me to change.

Then I rebooted and checked the temperature and noise level.

Tools used: Mobile Monitor for measuring CPU temparature and DTemp for HDD.

Before enabling AAM, the HDD temps were around 45-47°C with the laptop docked on Ultrabase.

After enabling AAM, it's at 41-42°C.

Then I have undocked it, removed Ultrabase, placed the laptop on a wooden desk and checked the temps. Pleasingly, DTemp is reporting 37-39°C

The noise level is a lot better with AAM enabled, the HDD activity LED is not blinking so often as it did in full performance mode.

I have to admit that I like this tool a lot. I have never thought that enabling AAM would have so much effect on HDD temperatures. (almost 10°C max Delta in my case)

[agarza]

Thanks for your input. I've never used Feature Tool, I'm wondering if it could reduce the noise level on a 7K100.