Barracuda ATA-V and Acoustic Management?

[KommisMar]

Hey all,

I recently replaced my two 7200RPM Western Digital hard drives with a Seagate Barracuda ATA-V in an effort to reduce noise and make the computer more adequate for recording. It seemed like a new drive would be a much wiser purchase than a couple of SmartDrive enclosures, and I turned out to be right. While the WD drives emit a very loud whine in a system with quiet fans, the Seagate has no idle noise at all that I can hear.

On the other hand, I have found seek noise to be increased quite a bit. While the WD drives were loud in an idle state, when they were reading and writing I heard nothing but a very low-pitched rumble. But, I have found the Barracuda to be fairly loud when active. I'm very happy with the performance increase (I have benchmarked the drive as being quite a bit faster than what I had before), but not the noise. It doesn't bother me at all compared to the "jet engine sound" of the WD drives, but on the other hand, I don't want a microphone to pick it up when recording.

I've been thinking about picking up a rubber band enclosure for the drive to see if the vibrations go away, but in the meantime, I read the datasheet for the drive. It does seem to have some sort of acoustic management, because the datasheet lists two specifications for sound levels - "quiet seek" and "performance seek". However, I couldn't find any mention on Seagate's website for how to toggle between the two modes. So am I reading this correctly, or is there in fact no acoustic management that can be enabled or disabled?

I would assume that it's in performance mode now, considering that it's faster than my other drives (which were also 7200RPM, but were models from a couple generations ago), and if there's another mode to try, I'd like to.

[irwincur]

You can hear the V. I have a IV and I seriously need to put my ears right on the thing to hear it. They are amazing drives, and much quieter than my two Maxtor drives. Plus their fluid bearing system is supposed to greatly increase their longevity do to the removal of many mechanical and moving parts.