License: Freeware
Operating System: pure MS-DOS (boot-floppy and boot-CD available)
The IBM/Hitachi Feature Tool is a utility which allows user control over some of the parameters of today's high performance ATA hard disk drives.
Supported features:
Change Acoustic Level
This function is generally referred to as Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) and is available on the newer Hitachi Global Storage Technologies ATA drives and Legacy IBM ATA Hard disk drives. The acoustic level of the drive can be modified to better suite the environment in which it is functioning. The drive performance may vary as the acoustic level changes with increased acoustic management.
Change Advanced Power Mode
This feature allows you to change the default power saving mode of the drive. The device preserves the selected power mode across all forms of reset, that is Power on, Hardware and Software resets.
Change Cache Settings
Read and write caching are performance enhancement features of hard disk drives. Write cache allows the drive to write data out to the disk media some time after reporting to the system that the write operation had been completed. This data is protected provided power isn't removed from the drive. Read caching is where data is read form the disk media and kept in its buffer in anticipation that the data that the system next requires is already in the buffer.
Change the Capacity
Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not recognised.
Change S.M.A.R.T. Operations
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is intended to protect user data by monitoring and storing critical performance and calibration parameters. SMART devices uses sophisticated analysis algorithms to predict the likelihood of near-tern degradation or fault conditions.
Change Ultra DMA Mode
Modern ATA drives are currently designed to function at bus speed up to 100 MB/sec. The bus speed associated with each Ultra DMA Mode is as follows:
UDMA Mode 0 — ATA 16 (16.7 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 1 — ATA 25 (25 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 2 — ATA 33 (33 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 3 — ATA 48 (48 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 4 — ATA 66 (66 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 5 — ATA 100 (100 MB/sec)
UDMA Mode 6 — ATA 133 (133 MB/sec)
Some older (Legacy) motherboard and Plug-in ATA adapters may not support the higher bus speeds and installing one of these newer ATA hard disk drives could cause a malfunction of your system. To resolve this incompatibility it may be required to reduce the bus speed that the drive is operating at to one which is more compatible with the Motherboard/Plug-in adapter.
Show Drive Temperature
This feature displays the current temperature inside the disk drive. The temperature around the disk drive is normally about 5 °C lower.
Change SATA Settings
This allows the user to change the Hard Drive's maximum supported interface speed or Enable / Disable Spread Spectrum Clocking.
Links:
IBM/HITACHI Drive Feature Tool (User Guide)
IBM/HITACHI Drive Feature Tool (Windows Boot-Diskette Creator)
IBM/HITACHI Drive Feature Tool (Floppy Image)
IBM/HITACHI Drive Feature Tool (ISO CD Image)
