If you bought an HDD in the last couple of years, some chances that your HDD's performance is crippled by the Automatic acoustic management (AAM) feature. AAM is a method for reducing acoustic emanations (noise reduction) and is popular especially among Western Digital HDDs. You can use software like EVEREST or SiSoftware Sandra to determine if your HDD uses AAM. Anyhow, AAM reduces performance in exchange for acoustics. Now if you are an end-user/enthusiast and would like to disable AAM to boost your HDD's performance, just follow the short guide below (at your own risk - of course).

1. Download Hitachi Feature Tool 2.12 ISO image (Don't mind the Hitachi name, it software works with all drives).
2. Burn the ISO image onto a CD/DVD.
3. If you're using AHCI, enter the BIOS and ensure that your SATA controller is in legacy IDE mode.
4. Boot from the CD/DVD, Hitachi Feature Tool should run automatically from DOS mode.
5. In the main menu, select the correct HDD from the list.
6. Go to features and choose Change Acoustic Level, check the disable box and choose apply.
7. Exit Hitachi Feature Tool and reboot your computer.

Hope you like this guide. And remember! Automatic acoustic management is for pussies.