Managing the acoustics of a Terabyte

Earlier this month, we lauded Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 terabyte hard drive for its industry-leading capacity. We weren't as impressed with the drive's noise levels, though. Under a seek load, the 7K1000 tipped our digital sound level meter at over 57 decibels, putting it at the loud end of 7,200-RPM drives on the market.

The drive we used for testing was a standard retail model, and by default, those drives come with Hitachi's Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) disabled. Some of you suggested we test with AAM enabled, and we have.