[POLL]Hard drive noise on TM8204

I'm having this odd clunking noise with my hard drive, sounding much like the drive head hitting something and rebounding. The sound even comes with the freeze in applications usually associated with a crashing hard drive. So I've decided to poll all those with TM8204's and see if they have something similar.

 

To all those who said yes, could you give your build date, hard drive model, and a description of the sound?
To those who say no, could you give same minus the description?

 

Um, not sure what build date, never taken it appart so no idea what hard drive, however, I do have Gravisense installed, which sounds from another thread like it might be the cause.

 

If you run HDTune or HD Health, they will give you the model number. Actually, if you open up device manager and look under hard drives, the drive name will be its model number.

 

I said yes to the poll. I have a 0601 build and come to think of it, I don't think I have heard that sound (which you described very well, it sounds like heads being retracted quickly and bouncing off of an endstop) since I installed the newest version of Gravisense. I didn't worry about it much and worry about it less now. I'll keep my ears open but i think it's gone now.

My HD is ST9120821AS

Y

 

Okay, mine is the same as Yellow11's drive, but I just upgraded Gravisense from 1.0.0.6 to 1.0.0.10 from the Acer Europe site, so we'll see if I still hear that noise, but it does sort of make sense that it could be it autoparking the heads whenever you move the laptop (of course, if you aren't going to ever move the laptop, I'd just turn it off).

 

The noise would occurr even when the laptop was sitting on my desk, docked and not moving at all. I think the new Gravisense fixed it. it did solve the issue of errors appearing in the system section of the Event Viewer.

Y

 

Yes I've not noticed the "clunk" noise since I installed the new version, might just be co-incidence, but so far so good.

 

Just got back in from D.C. I've sent in my laptop for service on an unrelated matter (my video card was emitting a high pitched whining buzzing anytime anything 3D came up) but I have listed this hard drive clunking noise in Additional Symptoms. I wonder if Acer will do anything about it. I'll update when I get it back.

 

Just got my TM8204 (build 06/06). The HDD is a Toshiba MK1234GSX (120GB). I have not encountered any unusual noice or clunking as described.

 

It's interesting that Acer seems to have switched hard drive models in their newer builds... Mine was the same as Yellow11's and Arla's, the Seagate model. Perhaps the Seagate wasn't working well with the older versions of GraviSense. I guess I'll find out when my laptop gets back. Speaking of, anyone know how I can check the status of my service online or must I call Acer "24/7" (HA) Technical Support.

 

Acer Depot Repair is comprised of a bunch of idiots. I received my laptop back today only to find that they've succeeded in breaking it instead of fixing a minor issue. The laptop seemed sluggish after rebooting so I ran PCPitstop benchmark to find my memory and my CPU being yellow flagged for sub-par performance. I thought a reboot might help and that's when I found out it was broken. The laptop shut itself down mid-boot and I was left going "What the hell?". I felt around the power button and found it to be extremely hot so I realize the laptop must be overheating and shutting itself mid-boot because it detects that it is. After the third attempt at rebooting (I wanted to verify it was indeed an overheat issue), the video card completely crapped out, most likely from the heat, and I have no image on the screen at all, not even the BIOS screen. Now I have to send it back, after just getting it and I am really pissed off

/end rant

 

i've got the same issue. I get a weird clicking sound matched usually with a slow down or a lock up and sometimes a blue screen. Same HDD model as you guys as well. I just started having this issue again today- i thought i had gotten rid of it since my clean install. I'm wondering if its realted to video drivers because i did change those today.

i'm going to give the new gravisense driver a go, see what happens.

 

i get an error in the event viewer as well:

The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort2, did not respond within the timeout period.

 

MY clunking is back again, and it turns out that for some reason Gravisense has stopped working. I reinstalled gravisense and it still doesn't work. A system event error report says the service could not be started. Does Gravisense or Gsensor run as a service? There is no service listed for it on my system. Also, the Gsensor is not recognised in the device manager. So either the hardware has quit working or somehow there is a driver Missing.

Anybody else havng similar problems with the Gsensor?

Y