The sound of this Maxtor-hdd drives me crazy!

For all discussions regarding the JVC HM-HDS1 (40GB hard disk and S-VHS recorder)

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Jens
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Joined: Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:46 pm

The sound of this Maxtor-hdd drives me crazy!

Post by Jens »

What a great info-site, Andy! Thanks a lot for your efforts.

I bought my JVC HM-HDS1 three years ago and since then the shrieky sound of the Maxtor-harddisk bothers me a lot. Ever since I dreamed of a heavenly silent 160-gig-Samsung-Spinpoint running in my JVC and tried to find a way to achieve this goal.

I discovered a newsgroup, where some guy suggested to clone and replace the drive. So I grabbed a Samsung (not actually the 160-gig-model, but decent 120 the least), cloned it with Linux/dd - and.... failed. Of course, as you all know. :cry:

No luck with the bigger harddrive I persisted my modest goal to get this little Maxtor-shrieker silent. Bought a silentMaxx-drive-hdd-"coat" (http://www.pcsilent.de/depd_silentmaxx_ ... pcshd1.asp), spent pretty much effort to attach this modified big thing back into the JVC and was relieved, when I recognized that the the shrieky whistle-sound was if not completely silenced but at least toned down to a level I could tolerate.

My victory persisted only for two weeks - more and more frequently the JVC happened to turn himself suddenly off after about one hour of operating. Shortly before the picture showed heavy disruption - obviously the disk always got overheated. SilentMaxx sucked! :(

I was frustrated an removed the silentMaxx - I had no choice but to accept the loud and disturbing sound of the JVC, but I never really managed to get used to it - more or less I am still teased by it.

I recently decided to give it another try - can't be, that there should be no way to silence this thing, I thought. But now as I found Andy's documentation about cloning the harddrive and his information, that only exactly the same harddrive-model will work, my last hopes vanished to ever get this shitty harddrive replaced by a more silent one.

But maybe there is another way of silencing? Does anybody have a clue or (hopefully successful) experience with that? Help would be highly appreciated!

Greetings
Jens
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Andy Cippico
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Post by Andy Cippico »

Jens, thank you for your kind comments. I'm glad some of the info on the web site was useful, although not much use in solving your noise problem...

I'm afraid I'm not aware of any device that will cure that particular problem, other than a completely different drive. As you know, latest drive technology is amazingly quiet and it seems a tragedy that you can't use a modern drive in the HDS1.

So, basically you're no further forward. Your only hope is for Geert Jan Laanstra to come up with a modified 'BIOS' for the machine. In theory this would incorporate code to accommodate various different types of drive geometry. I'd PM (personal message) him from his details on this forum and ask him how he's getting on.

Good luck,
Andy.
Last edited by Andy Cippico on Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jens
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Joined: Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:46 pm

Post by Jens »

Thanks, Andy, for your advice - I will do so. Hopefully Geert has better news for me...

I will keep you informed.

Greetings from Hamburg/Germany

Jens
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andywilks
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re re-writing the bios

Post by andywilks »

So far there's been no luck doing this. Geert Jan got my 'new' eeprom from an 80gig as used by JVC now. I presume he read the code, but has not come up with any new revelations. It would be necessary to remove-reprogram+reinsert the eeprom anyway (!!!) to allow another branded disk to be used.

Whats the availabilty like of the original drives say from Ebay etc...? that seemed the best source to get one to be able to clone onto.

Hope that helps
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Andy Cippico
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Re: re re-writing the bios

Post by Andy Cippico »

andywilks wrote:Whats the availabilty like of the original drives say from Ebay etc...? that seemed the best source to get one to be able to clone onto.
I can't speak for the Quantum Fireball LCT 20, but all the Maxtors I've tried have been really noisy. I doubt they'd have changed the manufacturing process for them, so I'm assuming whichever one you buy, it's going to be the same.
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