TiVo Community Forums Archives - Maxtor Utility Makes Your Hard Drive Quiet

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Maxtor Utility Makes Your Hard Drive Quiet
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Posted by: Intrepid-NY

Acoustic Management adjusts the speed of the head seeks, reducing the ambient sound level during normal operation.

Use this Maxtor Utility and set your Maxtor drive to QUIET (or FAST). It really makes a HUGE difference.

Download Here:

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...hp?p_faqid=1200

The AMSET utility (AMSET.EXE) can turn Acoustic Management off, or on (two on levels). The command flags (DOS-Based, command line switches) are:

/off - Turns Acoustic Management off, the drive operates at normal acoustic levels

/quiet - Quietest seeks, the speed of the seek operation is reduced to its lowest level to provide the quietest operations, this level has the most impact on drive performance.

/fast - Fastest seeks, the speed of the seek operation is reduced to provide quieter operation with the least amount of impact on the drive performance.

NOTE: AMSET.EXE is a DOS-Based, command line utility. It cannot be properly executed from a Windows 95/98/ME or Windows NT/2000/XP environment.

Posted by: litzdog911

So you recommend the "/quiet" setting instead of "/fast"? I assume that this setting is stored in the hard drive somehow so that it's still in effect when you put the drive into the Tivo?

Posted by: Intrepid-NY

The setting is permanently stored on the bios of the Hard Drive. The TiVo works fine with the Quiet setting and it really makes the TiVo much quieter. The TiVo will not perform "better" with the fast setting.

Posted by: PER

You quieted down your hard drive. How about the fan noise on the HDVR2? There was a post earlier saying the fan noise on this unit was much worse than the Sony? What is your experience?

Posted by: Intrepid-NY

The Fan noise seems about the same to me. :up:

Posted by: daggo

Ive noticed my drive is loud also. Ive read intrepids instrustions and Im still a little lost. (mac user) could some one step me through quieting the hard drive down. after I take it out of the TiVo. I have a Maxtor 7200 120gb

Do I need to do the whole upgrade over?

Cheers

Posted by: litzdog911

I don't know if the AMSET utility is available to run on a Mac. The process was very simple on my PC. Simply download the utility from Maxtor's web site, create the boot floppy with the utility, insert the TiVo drive into your computer using the same connector as your current hard drive (which you won't need during this process since you're booting from the floppy), boot the PC using the floppy, type "amset /quiet" and the utility will reset the hard drive's firmware for quiet mode. You then replace the drive into your TiVo and enjoy a quieter drive.

Posted by: Shredfest

Warning! It does not appear as though the AMSET utility works on the DiamondMax Plus 9 line of drives. I bought a Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM drive with 8MB cache, and the AMSET utility would not work on it. Did not detect any Maxtor drives attached to my system.

And although this drive has Fluid-Dynamic Bearings and is supposedly very quiet, the seek noise is very noticeable when installed in my HDVR2. I am beginning to suspect that the HDVR2 case is amplifying the sounds emanating from inside of it. :down:

UPDATE: Never mind. The AMSET utility DOES work with the above mentioned drive. I'm just a moron. I was running it from the WinXP command line rather than a DOS boot disk. DUH! You'd think all these years in Information Technology would be good for something... :p

Posted by: daggo

Going to give it a shot now!

Posted by: tdenson

Is there a Linux version of Amset around - with the obvious advantage of being able to run it in situ (as a Tivonet user)