Alienware 17 users.. do you also get a subtle shhhh shhhh shhhh noise?

Hey all,

I have just changed from an R4 to a new Alienware 17 and it has, from the very beginning, made a subtle and strange sound

It sounds a lot like the fans... but then you hear each of the fans (CPU and GPU) independently kick in

Its most noticeable when the fans are on idle or stop ... and the laptop will audibly go shhhh ......shhh ..shhh shhh ......shhh in what sounds like uneven intervals.. usually ~1 second apart (quite rapid). Its far too rapid to be fan speed modulation. It actually sounds like someone inside my laptop is inhaling / breathing

My R4 didn't do anything like this. Could it be something to do with the fact I'm running the raid 750gb HDDs?

If it doesn't appear to be normal to other owners, I guess my next step will be to run it with the back cover off and use my stethoscope or ears to try and locate the source

Its driving me a bit mad because Im suuuuure its not meant to be making this noise. It doesn't sound harmful but I am fussy.

Thanks all!

-Tristan

 

I guess that's a big no!

Pulling it apart now...

 

OK SO.. its the RAID HDDs... it is audibly coming from them. I guesss I have sensitive ears

Now that I take more notice, every time the HDD light flashes (about every ~1 second)... even though its only flashing for micro seconds, both HDDs burst for 0.5 seconds of reading or writing or whatever.

Is this a RAID thing? Or is this an mSata caching thing? or is it some hard disk head parking thing to prevent vibration damage??

The 750gb hdd in my R4 didn't make these noises... maybe theyre a different brand or model now.... or maybe something to do with the RAID / mSata cache controller... don't know. It annoys me less now that I know what it is. But still annoys me. Maybe I will go back to SSD for primary drive.

Why the hell is my HDD accessing every second anyway? Its virtually a fresh install.


In unrelated news, a fresh discovery. When the CPU fan is running at low speed and the laptop is closed (I set mine to not sleep when lid closed)... turning the laptop over semi-swiftly makes it go wwwzhhhooooowwww like a light saber!!!!

Im sure its not too good for it but it sounded so cool, I had to do it a few more times.

Regards,

A slightly irresponsible and childish gamer.

 

When raided the two drives will both have to access at the same time so you will get double the noise.

 

What Meaker says is correct. Both drives in RAID will operate at the same time so twice the noise BUT a HDD should be, or almost be, silent. That noise would concern me and I would like to know from which drive it is coming from because this might be the beginning of a real problem. I don't know what your knowledge level is regarding RAID and I assume you have it in RAID0 for the performance boost but if one drive fails then you have lost all your data and it is most likely not recoverable and this includes any data on a partition as well.

You need to make backups of your data to an external drive in-case one of your HDDs fail. Then I would remove the back cover and try and identify the noisy drive. Maybe I am over-reacting but you need to consider what you will lose if the computer crashes and the data is unrecoverable.

 

I think overreact. The sound is definitely identical from both drives.

Now that I think of it, I didn't notice anything in my M17X because I immediately upgraded to SSD... never even really ran it on mechanical HDD.

Its only clearly audible (and you do have to listen really carefully) when both fans are stopped.

Thanks for the tips. I am a 'veteran' with RAID, first playing with it for my MCSE study on windows NT 4.dinosaur. I know all about losing one drive in an array

-Tristan

 

Hey

I just wanted to say that I also experience the sound although I only have a single drive. It is only audible when everything else is silent.

I bought a small dog to make noise so I don't have to deal with listening to the HDD

 

LOL! that's a great way to deal with it xD