47 lines
1.6 KiB
Plaintext
47 lines
1.6 KiB
Plaintext
Automatic Acoustic Management
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=============================
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Most modern harddisk drives have the ability to speed down the head movements
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to reduce their noise output. The possible values are between 0 and 254. 128
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is the most quiet (and therefore slowest) setting and 254 the fastest (and loudest).
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Some drives have only two levels (quiet / fast), while others may have different
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levels realized between 128 and 254.
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To be able to use this with hdparm, you will need a current kernel with the -ac patches
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applied. Maybe the kernel of your favorite distribution will already include this (SuSE
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has it in their current kernel, for example).
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Just try to compile hdparm, type "hdparm" and have a look for "-M" in the output. If it
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doesn't appear, your kernel most likely doesn't support it.
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You can get the acoustic setting by typing
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hdparm -M /dev/hda
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To set the most quiet mode use
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hdparm -M 128 /dev/hda
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For the fastest setting use
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hdparm -M 254 /dev/hda
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Now test different values and try to hear the difference. :-)
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Not all disk drives support this setting - and the speed impacts may also vary between
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different manufacturers and models.
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If you see lines like
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kernel: hdb: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
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kernel: hdb: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
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in your syslog, then your harddisk will most likely not support Acoustic Management.
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Perhaps you also wanna have a look on the IBM Feature Tool, available at
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http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm.
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I would welcome any feedback to <gernot@hillier.de>
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Gernot
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