Latest version: quietHDD 1.5 Build# 250, 13. Dec. 2009

About:

Do you own a a a Netbook, Laptop or a Computer with an with a hard disk?
Well, then you perhaps noticed an annoying click sound that comes from time to time.

That's the reason I wrote quietHDD. A very small Windows application (~60 KBytes) that eliminates this sound. After some time spent on developing more and more useful functions were created, but it still is - and will ever be - a small utility to reduce noise.
quietHDD is the succsessor of eeeHDD. I noticed that more and more people using eeeHDD on non ASUS Laptops/Netbooks so I renamed
eeeHDD to quietHDD and added some more stuff like a user configurable GUI, AAM and so on.

Please keep in mind: This noisy sound occurs mostly on Seagate hard drives, but other manufactures are reported also.

Features:

• Small (about 60KB)
• Does not eat CPU time and uses a very small amout of RAM
• Functional and responsive but powerfull, GUI and non-GUI usage possibe through command line interface
• Modifies or disables the Advanced Power Management (APM) feature setting of the primary harddrive depending on powered and battery state
  
• Modifies the  Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) feature setting  of the primary harddrive depending on powered and battery state
• Works with almost any modern PATA and SATA harddrive
• Compatibility: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 200x, Windows Vista
  

Some background:

The click sound is produced by the Seagate hard drive of my eeePC 1000H (Seagate ST9160827AS).
When idle, the drive wants to park the heads because the Advanced Power Management (APM) of the hard drive is activated by default every time the drive motor spins up after suspend. This APM park feature produces the really annoying sound.

Now, whenever the system starts, wakes up from suspend or hibernate the drives APM is activated. The click sound comes back again and again.

This little tool just sits in the sys-tray and will recognize when the system wakes up from suspend or hibernate and disable the drives APM feature. That's all.

Reference for the Seagate Momentus 5400.4 SATA 3Gb/s 160-GB Hard Drive:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?v … b=Features
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp … 68842a.pdf
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datashe … 5400_4.pdf

APM Feature:

1. The APM feature value controls after which time the R/W head should be parked to avoid possible headcrashes when the hdd is idle.
2. After the heads has been parked, it also controls after which time the hdd spins down when still idle. (i.e. the drive motor turns off)
   

NOTE: All MTBF and power consumption values are for the Seagate Momentus 2.5'' harddrive - other drives should be similar
The lower you set the APM value the more the hdd parks the heads and spins down.
Well, those both things seems to be a good thing. But unfortunately every hdd has a so called MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure)
For the hdd head parking it is ~600,000 and in the first week my eee counts ~10,000 loads/unloads!
SpinUp/SpinDown count MTBF is ~20,000
The other annoying thing is the noise that the head parking makes...

A APM Value below ~100  makes the head parking and spin down very often. MTBF would be reached quiet early. (I personally prefer 255 on AC and DC)
Parking the head does not really consume too much battery power so it should does make any difference.
But a spin up after a spin down consumes about 1.0 amps! While running the hdd just consumes from 0.75 to 2.0 watts. (See Reference above)

AAM Feature:

The AAM value controls how fast (or slow) the head should be moved over the drive disks. This is another source of noise.
You can notice less noise when using small values on heavy disk I/O

This feature does not consumes any less or more (measurable) power from battery. It just moves the head faster or slower.

Windows Power Settings:

Windows can control the hdd spin down too! In the Power settings control panel you'll find it the settings for controlling the harddisk power.
I would always recommend to use Windows Power saving feature since Windows knows best when all memory I/O buffers has been written to disk!
quietHDD does not modifies any Windows settings in any way except you choose the "Disable suspend" option.