Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB, WOW

[luke]

I have many Hard drives. A few WD JB's, alot of Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8MB
cache drives of all sizes for video storage. I recently got one of the
Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB 7200rpm 8MB cache drives
http://tinyurl.com/3cref . I figured it would be similiar to the Diamond Max
drives, just larger. I was wrong.

I haven't done any benchmarks to test speed or anything like that, but what
strikes me about this drive is that it makes no noise whatsoever!!!

The DiamondMax Plus drives are find idle but become very noisy when
reading/writing(scratchy, scratchy, seek seek and do get on ones nerves
after a while. I hooked up my DiamondMax 200GB drive and the Maxline 250GB
drive, both 8MB cache 7200rpm in the to my machine and just did some open
air tests reading and writing on both. It's amazing that one drive can be so
much liuder than the other. Performing the exact same transfer the Maxline
drive hardly made a sound, I had to check if it was actually working and
that I wasn't copying to another drive. And I had it about 1 foot away from
me.

I've just built my new system this week around a Diamond Max 200GB drive,
I'm now wishing I'd have installed XP on the Maxline. Anyone else have one
of these drives?

 

[Alex Fraser]

[snip]

I haven't done any benchmarks to test speed or anything like that, but
what strikes me about this drive is that it makes no noise whatsoever!!!

[I compared it to a Maxtor DiamondMax and] It's amazing that one drive can
be so much liuder than the other. Performing the exact same transfer the
Maxline drive hardly made a sound, I had to check if it was actually
working and that I wasn't copying to another drive.

Some people (like me) consider access noise to be an advantage for just this
reason .

Alex

 

[Markeau]

did they both have the same acoustic management settings
enabled/disabled?

 

[luke]

did they both have the same acoustic management settings
enabled/disabled?

They're both at their default values.

 

[shawn]

They're both at their default values.

Okay, but are those settings the same? It may be that the new drive
defaults to the quiet setting which will make quite a difference in
how loud the drive sounds during access. If you haven't already you
should look on Maxtor's site for a utility to check/set the acoustic
settings and verify you are comparing two drives with the exact same
settings.

 

[Paul Hopwood]

Okay, but are those settings the same? It may be that the new drive
defaults to the quiet setting which will make quite a difference in
how loud the drive sounds during access. If you haven't already you
should look on Maxtor's site for a utility to check/set the acoustic
settings and verify you are comparing two drives with the exact same
settings.

Even on the most aggressive acoustic setting I've found Maxtors to be
considerably noisier than most other drives. In fact the swapping it
from one extreme to other doesn't seem to make all that much
difference to noise on any of the DiamondMax drives I've tried.

I've yet to try a Maxline but if the difference is as severe as the OP
suggests it would indicate a more serious improvement than that gained
through changing acoustic management settings.

--

 

[luke]

"luke" <[email protected]> wrote:

Okay, but are those settings the same? It may be that the new drive
defaults to the quiet setting which will make quite a difference in
how loud the drive sounds during access. If you haven't already you
should look on Maxtor's site for a utility to check/set the acoustic
settings and verify you are comparing two drives with the exact same
settings.

I check the Maxline using Amset using AMSET /check and it read

"acoutstic management on, current mode: performance"

I didn't even realise "performance" was an option? I thought it was just
off/fast/quiet?

 

[Markeau]

I check the Maxline using Amset using AMSET /check and it read

"acoutstic management on, current mode: performance"

I didn't even realise "performance" was an option? I thought it was
just off/fast/quiet?

Using Intel Application Accelerator my Maxtor's show 3 Acoustic
Management options:
o Disabled
o Maximum Performance
o Minimum Acoustic Output
.... so presumably your MaxLine can be set to be even quieter LOL

 

[AJ]

I have many Hard drives. A few WD JB's, alot of Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8MB
cache drives of all sizes for video storage. I recently got one of the
Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB 7200rpm 8MB cache drives
http://tinyurl.com/3cref . I figured it would be similiar to the Diamond Max
drives, just larger. I was wrong.

I haven't done any benchmarks to test speed or anything like that, but what
strikes me about this drive is that it makes no noise whatsoever!!!

The DiamondMax Plus drives are find idle but become very noisy when
reading/writing(scratchy, scratchy, seek seek and do get on ones nerves
after a while. I hooked up my DiamondMax 200GB drive and the Maxline 250GB
drive, both 8MB cache 7200rpm in the to my machine and just did some open
air tests reading and writing on both. It's amazing that one drive can be so
much liuder than the other. Performing the exact same transfer the Maxline
drive hardly made a sound, I had to check if it was actually working and
that I wasn't copying to another drive. And I had it about 1 foot away from
me.

I've just built my new system this week around a Diamond Max 200GB drive,
I'm now wishing I'd have installed XP on the Maxline. Anyone else have one
of these drives?

Just got a 160GB don't know if it's that line though. NTFS is even
quieter yet!
_________________________
French Connection:
http://www.metrospy.com/boycott_brands.htm

 

[M@rtin]

I check the Maxline using Amset using AMSET /check and it read

"acoutstic management on, current mode: performance"

I didn't even realise "performance" was an option? I thought it was just
off/fast/quiet?

If you use the Hitachi Feature Tool then you can set the AAM on a scale
between silence and performance - it's much better than the standard Maxtor
tool and eliminates that loud seek noise on the Plus9s.

 

[Doug Ramage]

If you use the Hitachi Feature Tool then you can set the AAM on a scale
between silence and performance - it's much better than the standard Maxtor
tool and eliminates that loud seek noise on the Plus9s.

What other drives does the Hitachi Feature Tool work on?

 

[Michael Rodgers]

Even on the most aggressive acoustic setting I've found Maxtors to be
considerably noisier than most other drives. In fact the swapping it
from one extreme to other doesn't seem to make all that much
difference to noise on any of the DiamondMax drives I've tried.

This is strange. Since using Maxtors acoustics utility, my Plus9 120Gb is
silent. At all times.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

This is strange. Since using Maxtors acoustics utility, my Plus9 120Gb is
silent. At all times.

It was probably set to selfdestruct at warranty end. ;-)

 

[Paul Hopwood]

This is strange. Since using Maxtors acoustics utility, my Plus9 120Gb is
silent. At all times.

I guess either we have a different definition of "silent", you've got
a particularly quite example or my hearing is better than yours? ;-))


--

 

[Parish]

I guess either we have a different definition of "silent", you've got
a particularly quite example or my hearing is better than yours? ;-))

Of course the accoustics of the case will affect this - quite
significantly in some cases (no pun intended).

Parish