Maxtor Diamondmax 9, how loud?

[Discordia]

I bought my son a Diamondmax 8 drive a few weeks ago and was suprised
by how quiet it was. Yesterday, I bought myself a Diamondmax 9 120GD
drive, and its noiser than the three year old WD 30GB drive it
replaces. I makes what I'd consider normal seeking noises
(*clicking*) on the old WD drive, but its much louder than my son's
new drive, or the drive in my main computer (an eight month old WD
100GB drive). The box had a small dent in the corner, and the
salesclerk (Future Shop) was rather rough handling it (smacking it on
the counter a few times).

I'm wondering if what I'm hearing is normal, or if its been damaged?
Opinions?

 

[Joe Hayes]

The DM9 seeks are rather loud in my opinion, but you can fix that by
downloading the AMSET program from Maxtor's web site to enable quiet mode
(at the cost of some performance). But if it's noisy when idle, then
something may be wrong.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I bought my son a Diamondmax 8 drive a few weeks ago and
was suprised by how quiet it was. Yesterday, I bought myself
a Diamondmax 9 120GD drive, and its noiser than the three
year old WD 30GB drive it replaces. I makes what I'd consider
normal seeking noises (*clicking*) on the old WD drive, but its
much louder than my son's new drive, or the drive in my main
computer (an eight month old WD 100GB drive). The box had
a small dent in the corner, and the salesclerk (Future Shop) was
rather rough handling it (smacking it on the counter a few times).

I'm wondering if what I'm hearing is normal, or if its been damaged?
Opinions?

I have no idea how much variance there is among individual units
of a hard drive manufacturing run, but both 60GB Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drives that I bought this summer are so
quiet that it was like I had earplugs in when I first installed them.
My old clickety clack hard drive was a 5400 rpm 17GB Maxtor,
and I figured the new 7200 rpm drives might be louder, but was
I surprised! With my old HD, I didn't even have to look at the
monitor to know at what point in the boot-up process the PC was
at. With the new DiamondMax Plus 9s, I have to watch the
monitor because the HDs just sit there and murmur and whisper.

One other thing I noticed was that the sound level and quality
of the HDs' armature noise is dependent on the mounts. The
position of the primary HD in my Dell Dimension is in a vertical
plastic cage that keeps vibrations isolated from large flat surfaces.
The secondary HD's position is more standard, and it rests
horizontally, held by a bracket that fits inside an expansion bay
metal box inside the tower case. The vibrations find their way
to the sides of the metal box, and the same HD, when moved
from the primary postion to the secondary position, sounds
much louder, more resonant and "hollow". In the case of the
DiamondMax Plus 9s, though, they are much quieter than the
old HD no matter where they're mounted. If my DiamondMax
Plus 9s are typical, I'd say you got a lemon. Or is there any
chance that you mounted the new HD differently?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Bob]

I have 2 different Maxtor DiamondMax9's. Both are 80GB - 1 of 'em has a
80GB platter and uses 2 heads and 1 disk. The other uses 60 or 68GB platter
and has 3 heads and uses 2 disks. The single disk is MUCH quieter than the
2 disk one. With the 120GB I imagine that you most likely have 2 disks with
3 heads (40 per side times 3). I actually installed mine to rest on the
bottom of my case and built some rails
feet out of Styrofoam. Since I don't move my case it works for me. This
eliminated 75% of the noise and even placed the drive closer to my bottom
front case fan. The key is to keep from having the drive vibrate the case
really.

 

[Clive]

The DM9 line are relatively noisy seekers in fact they are far noiser
than the D740X (the previous Maxtor line DM9 replaces) which is whisper
quiet (apart from the slight "whistle" of the bearings on my non liquid
pair).

In fact I would say it must be based on a Quantam design as all their
drives had the same noisy seek "feature".

 

[Markeau]

3 DM9 200GB's are very quiet.

 

[Discordia]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:01:34 -0600, "Markeau"

I seem to be getting a variety of responses from different sources.
Half say theirs is "quiet" while the other half reports a lot of noise
when the drive is seeking. And from what my research has told me,
even though they're all called Diamondmax 9, they're all built
differently. Still haven't decided what I'll do, its a bit too loud.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

New DM9 160GB from Costco, not really noisey at idle or seeking. At least
no noisier than the other drives in the system, 2x ibm22gxp, maxtor 40gb,
and maxtor dm 160.

 

[chrisv]

I bought my son a Diamondmax 8 drive a few weeks ago and was suprised
by how quiet it was. Yesterday, I bought myself a Diamondmax 9 120GD
drive, and its noiser than the three year old WD 30GB drive it
replaces. I makes what I'd consider normal seeking noises
(*clicking*) on the old WD drive, but its much louder than my son's
new drive, or the drive in my main computer (an eight month old WD
100GB drive).

The Diamond Max Plus 9's are my drives of choice, and as others have
said, they are silent except the seeks. I did try Maxtor's acoustical
management, with the /fast setting (minimal impact on performance),
and found it also made a minimal impact on the seek noise 8). It's
far from bothersome, though - I'm not going to even try the /quiet
setting, as I don't want to lose the performance.