Acer 4920 Hard Drive 'ticking' (Hitachi 5k250)

Hey there guys (and girls)

Took delivery of my new Acer 4920 yesterday and am a *little* concerned about the hard drive on it.
It appears to be the Hitachi 5k250 (250GB) and seems to want to tick / click continuously whilst the system is on.
I have noticed a few posts about drives that continuoulsy click, but have not been able to come to a concrete conclusion.
The problem basically occurs when the system is idle in vista. The hard drive light will flick on and off roughly once a second and with it the drive will make a slight clicking / ticking news as if the heads are spinning down and back up quickly. This doest stop no matter how long I leave the system on, and windows says that it has completed indexing the drive.
I've downloaded the hitachi tools from thier site and turned on acoustic management and changed the power settings on the drive (now set to performance) but it doesnt seem to make a difference.

Its more of an annoyance than anything, although I dont imagine its too good for the drive to be constantly starting up and winding down (if thats what it is doing).

Has anyone had any experiences with this drive or the acer 4920 itself and could shed some light on this issue, and maybe suggest a 'fix'?

Thanks in advance guys,

 

I suspect Vista superfetch feature

situation is normal for new laptop. vista will take 1-2 weeks to learn user behaviour and i also notice it when i brought my 5920. Give 1-2 weeks for your laptop & see the difference. Normally HITACHI HDD are bit loud compared to other brands ,but they are the best

Keep your Acoustic management settings @ default values .Changing it will cause lower system performance

HDD made for rough use & working it continually will not kill it ASAP.don't worry about that

 

ahh superfetch....

thanks for your reply - I'll give it a couple of weeks and see if it calms down. Tis a weird feature for sure. I'm pretty much new to vista, having come from the world of OS X.

 

What!? You went from OSX to Vista!?

 

haha - dont worry I've not dumped OS X.

My Intel Imac still takes pride of place in my room.

Having used OS X for a couple of years I'm finding vista to be a bit of a culture shock. Having to confirm practically every action I make seems like a very strange way to make a system more secure.

I just wasn't too keen on the ibook hardware that you could get for 700 quid, as nice as they look and all...

Not sure I made the right choice going for the 4920 though. No one else seems to have got one, which is usually a bad sign - probably should have waited a little longer and gone for the 5920. Oh well...

 

Well....Try some Vista tweak guides ....
A guide to Tweak & Optimize Vista

 

It just happens that the US and some other countries only carry 5920g. Just because few people have 4920G here doesn't mean it's a bad choice.

I've been a XP user for a long time before I touched OSX systems at my school. Shamefully I started to like OSX more and more... but quickly I began to lean toward Windows again after using Vista.

 

Thank for the link to the tweak guide - I shall give it a little look.
Hard drive is still ticking away like a little bomb or something. On the odd occassion when my fans stop whiring its really annoying.

Maybe I should learn to stop worrying and love the bomb

 

Hey Dude,

Can i know where i can download Hitachi HDD acustic software??
PLS!!!

 

Here you go.....

Downloads And Utilities For Hitachi Hard Disk

 

wow that was quick!!
thanks

 

Hi everybody,

First of all, sorry for my english I am not the best but I hope you will understand me

I just bought a 5K250 from Hitachi and I also have this ticking thing (and I am still on the old good XP SP2). Is there nothing to do about it? It is driving me crazy!!!


Thanks for the help