New System - AAM Problem

hinz · Post by **hinz** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:12 am

Hey

Just built a new system for a friend in the past few days and I'd like to enable AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) on the hard drive, but whenever the setting is applied it gets reset on reboot. I've used the feature tool from hitachi with no sucess.

Any ideas to what the problem might be?

Full specs
ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series iP35 Motherboard
Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-12) Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM
Xpertvision 8500GT Sonic edition 256MB 128bit DDR3 DVI TVO PCI-E
Samsung SH-S183 SATA 18x DVDÂ±RW/RAM Black - Bare Drive OEM
Corsair VX450WUK 450W PSU
Asus TA-210
Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-t PCI Freeview

thanks

hinz · Post by **hinz** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:13 pm

Anyone?

Bootay · Post by **Bootay** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 5:20 pm

I used the hitachi tool on mine without issue. I forget the syntax, but it was a pain in the butt. Anyway, once set it definitely stuck, made a huge different to set it to 128...and performance is still great.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:20 am

If it gets reset on reboot it might be that BIOS forces it's own policies onto harddrive power management. Enter BIOS setup and see if there's anything about AAM.

It may also be that BIOS is not the culprit but HDD is not capable of saving the settings to non-volatile memory. I've encountered that type of problems with Seagate U5... though it was not with AAM but PM feature that was lost on next power cycle.

If you have a USB enclosure for the drive, you can find out whether it's BIOS or HDD itself that causes AAM setting to disable. Enable AAM with Hitachi FTOOL, then yank power cable off the computer. BIOS shouldn't stand a chance of ****ing up the setting this way. Then transfer HDD to USB enclosure and use some other computer to access the USB drive and measure random access time to determine whether AAM is still enabled.

If it is, then BIOS is very likely the culprit. If it's not, then the HDD is either incapable of saving the setting or need some tweaking to make changes permanent. Solving BIOS problem might be easier but I cannot guarantee that even it is possible.

If problem is BIOS and if you can't tell BIOS not to **** with AAM setting, there's still one way to prevent this from happening: enable AAM, yank the power cable out, install some PCI addon card and mount HDD to that. Some PCI addon card do not support changing AAM (that is, either enabling or disabling) as well as they won't support SMART, PM, APM, etc. Beware: some controllers might support them, so doing this might not solve the issue.

But like I said, PCI card can only solve the problem if it's BIOS that's the culprit. And it would require quite a bit sacrifice: money, performance, (potentially) compatibility, possibility to use SMART diagnostics, etc.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 1:51 pm

I have read on other websites a couple of months ago that some of the newer Asus MBs are not able to set the AAM on hard drives. I can't remember which sites and I'm not really willing to look this up, but perhaps you can google for it. Or maybe somebody else here can confirm this.

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 3:06 pm

AAM is completely independent of the motherboard; it's either embedded in the drive or it's not. The Hitachi tool for AAM management runs in DOS off a floppy or CD. Not all drives allow AAM adjustments. Some are either turned off or on, w/no change possible. Usually if not adjustable, it's off or not implemented at all.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:12 pm

I googled "Western Digital WD3200AAKS AAM" and got two forum hits, same forum. One said the Asus P5K didn't allow AAM to be set. The other suggested using "Notebook Hardware Control" software from Windows to install AAM on the HDD.

hinz · Post by **hinz** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:38 pm

forgot to update this topic.

In the end, after I couldn't get the AAM to stay set, I swapped the motherboard for a Gigabyte one and AAM now stays on all the time, which means the Asus board was either faulty or they don't allow AAM

thanks for your help

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:28 pm

MikeC wrote:AAM is completely independent of the motherboard; it's either embedded in the drive or it's not. The Hitachi tool for AAM management runs in DOS off a floppy or CD. Not all drives allow AAM adjustments. Some are either turned off or on, w/no change possible. Usually if not adjustable, it's off or not implemented at all.

I was under that assumption, too, but there have been several confirmed reports of this problem with some ASUS MBs. Can anyone confirm this? I know I saw this topic somewhere, but I can't remember where.