Seagate 7200.8: NCQ and AAM

eclipsevv · Post by **eclipsevv** » Sun May 08, 2005 2:38 pm

I was doing some research on various sites about the 7200.8 (I've just bought a 400GB SATA; I knew it was not the most silent choice, but I needed 400GB).

Some sites are claiming the 7200.8 is much quieter than the 7200.7, some sites are saying it's louder.

I also found a bit strange that enabling NCQ made a big difference in seek times for this drive;see for example http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/storage/1208/6.html (it's in Italian, look for the "tempo medio di accesso" graph): while NCQ makes no difference in 7200.7, in reduces seek time from 15.5ms to 13.7ms for the 7200.8.

I think I've found the answer: the drive automatically goes into quiet seeks (AAM enabled) if you disable NCQ (some people report this happens only after a few hours), and goes into performance seeks if you enable NCQ.

In my case (NCQ not supported on my mobo), I found it only slightly louder than a Barracuda IV.

Can all 7200.8 owners confirm this?

See also:
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.p ... 9436&st=25

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Sun May 08, 2005 3:14 pm

Hello:

I'm not sure that you can disable NCQ -- if the controller supports it (as it does on the nForce4 SATA controller), then it is enabled. I did not find any way in the BIOS or any other way to disable or enable it.

I did build a system with four Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ, and they are pretty quiet. However, they run pretty warm (as does the new Maxtor). The Seagate drives seem to have a little more idle noise than a 7200.7 IDE, but less seek noise. They are not as quiet as a Samsung, but they are not very much louder, either.

eclipsevv · Post by **eclipsevv** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:36 pm

NeilBlanchard wrote: I'm not sure that you can disable NCQ -- if the controller supports it (as it does on the nForce4 SATA controller), then it is enabled. I did not find any way in the BIOS or any other way to disable or enable it.

It should be something like "Configure SATA as" [AHCI | Standard IDE | RAID]; you should set it to Standard IDE.

superdrive · Post by **superdrive** » Sat May 21, 2005 6:39 am

i just installed my new 400gb seagate drive,
i must say im impressed how quiet the seek noise is. much lower than a maxtor diamondmax 10 is unless you screw with the aam settings.
i dont think ill even need to tinker with the aam settings on this one.

Gix3r · Post by **Gix3r** » Thu May 26, 2005 11:40 am

I just installed a 250gb SATA 7200.8 that I purchased, and while it is MUCH quieter than the insanely high pitched whining WD 80 gig I removed, I have one complaint/question. It seems at idle it will randomly for long periods of time make lots of seek noise. Sometimes I will be downloading something to the drive, but even if I turn the downloads off, the noise continues. So, the periods when it does this seem to be random. I'm not 100% sure its the drive, because if I put my ear really close to it, it doesn't seem to be the suspect, but the noise seems to not happen if i boot up with the drive disconnected. Is there any way a fan could make this sort of noise?

MikeMcLarenF1 · Post by **MikeMcLarenF1** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 5:53 am

Gix3r wrote:It seems at idle it will randomly for long periods of time make lots of seek noise. Sometimes I will be downloading something to the drive, but even if I turn the downloads off, the noise continues. So, the periods when it does this seem to be random.

I get it on my 7200.7 also. Seems like a common encounter with many Seagate drives. When I load something the sound goes away. I also own a Barracuda IV (yay) and the drive seems to do the same when used as a USB storage drive. However, under internal PATA use there never seems to be the seeking problem. I guess it hasn't cost you any problems other than paranoia. I've been living with the chattering for a while now and no data seems to be corrupt; Well, if there were any, it'd be pretty hard to seek up 160Gb of data to find it.......... But so far, no.

sun.moon · Post by **sun.moon** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:54 am

AAM? Parden, but somehow I recall that AAM was disabled (and not enableable) in the 7200.7 and 7200.8.... Or was that only the 7200.7?