click of Death on M15x i7

I have had my M15x for a full day now and the click of death began 3 hours after receiving it. Has anyone else had an issue with their HD clicking very very faintly yet persistently. I know it is the HD because I removed the under case and listened to the sound emanating from the HD.

 

Um you should call alienware tech and get your hd replaced.
1800-alienware

 

I did it just took three hours via the phone. They are going to send it out but there was a technical snafu and the manger has to approve the sending of my new HD which =more time waiting and listening to the click of DEATH. I was wondering if anyone else had experienced this problem. I can play Crysis on 1080 gamer and my HD=250GB. Any responses would be great

 

is this a frequent occurrence in the new m15x's?

 

Don't think so. Even though his hard drive is new, it's always possible to receive a dying / defective hard drive. It happens to certain amount of hard drives when it's being manufactured...

 

bad quality control they must use a low confidence level: yay STATS

 

Chase, why don't you download seatools and run it in the meantime? =)

 

Yeah, mine started doing it yesterday, friggen great.

 

I think mine has it, it's the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 250GB right? Newegg has people listing this problem frequently...

 

I believe the unibody macbook pros also had this issue. Apple came out with a patch that supposedly fixed the problem. Just an FYI.

 

I am like you and just went ahead and put in a SSD.

 

So I called up Alienware tech support late last night, got through after about 10 minutes of being on hold, got through to Paullo, who was really nice and actually kind of knowledgeable. Anyways, I told him I was hearing clicking noises but seeing no real performance drop. I told him I wasn’t experiencing any performance loss yet, the slight noise is just kind of annoying if it’s dead quiet in the room where I am. He had me run a few of the diagnostics in the F12 bootup menu, which all passed (although if this is a drive head issue usually, the scan disk tests wouldn’t really show that right?)

I also don’t hear it when the drive is under any type of load, like pasting large files or running games. Does this mean I don’t have the issue? Because I swear I hear a constant noise coming from that part of the laptop when it’s idle or just barely being used (like working on a Word doc or something). It sounds like it’s constantly searching or writing, not too sure. I just know I’ve never heard that from any other hard drive I’ve owned.

Another question is: if I decide to upgrade the hard drive to a larger capacity, are the included discs (not the Alienrespawn one you have to pay extra for) enough for a clean install of my OS?

 

Yes, you should be able to do a clean install if you boot from the OS Recovery disk, but you'll need to install all drivers manually.

 

My drive tests fine as well but that still doesn't explain the constant persistant faint clicking. I can game fine and have no performance issues yet the clicking is annoying and leads me to believe that I will eventually have performance issues in the near future. Shazzbozz is your sound a clicking at idle like mine every couple or seconds or so and did you get a new HD from tech

 

Yes, exact same issue, no performance loss at all for now. I've read around the net that some people found it to be the hard drive being stuck in between wanting to go into power save mode and full performance mode, and this has been fixed via a firmware update. Others have said they've fixed it by using Notebook Hardware Control.

I dunno though, I don't want to get too frisky with my lappy and end up voiding the warranty. Will probably just double check the sleep settings on the disk and call Tech Services again to get a tech or replacement drive out here asap.

 

I'd say to anyone with a clicking disk to check it out with speedfans S.M.A.R.T. checker. If it reports back fine then chances are the disk is fine, some Seagates do have an annoying tendancy to click even when they're running fine - Something to do with EM interference I think causes the heads to reset or something along those lines which causes the clicking. I have a desktop seagate and this occassionally happens to that too.

 

I opted to have dell send me out a replacement today. If one thing is wrong it could mean three things are wrong. The replacement option is great because I can continue to use this clicker until I receive my new M15x in the mail. I would recommend this path for anyone having issues. No reason to pay 2k for a laptop and not have it work flawlessly every time.

 

Yeah, I'm beginning to think, as I read more around the web, that Seagate makes, and admits to making, noisy drives. The sound I have definitely isn't metal (the actuator arm) on metal or plastic. It's more like it's constantly in a writing mode, the same sound you hear from any other hard drive. I dunno, it's just annoying as hell though. If it isn't broken, I may spend the 50 bucks to replace it with a WD drive.

 

I was even upgraded to free next day and was promised some sort of compensation for my efforts. What sort of compensations does dell normally give out?

 

My sound is a clicking sound like when you click on an icon with volume set to low. Shazzbozz if it is load enough to be noticed than you should not have to live with the annoyance. I really am perplexed as to why the sound is occuring given that performance is not affected but it should not be happening.

 

Did you just say "send me a replacement please"? Or did you have to go through the whole song and dance of troubleshooting?

 

This is what you do: Do not go through alienware, look up your order number, go to dells main page than support than returns on the left bar. Once in returns click computer and fill out the information page that will be sent to a Dell support person via email. They should contact you within a day and they are very helpful because they specialize in returns and replacements. When you speak with someone just let them know that your hard drive is clicking and that you want a replacement because you are not comfortable with keeping a laptop that had an issue from the starting gate. Let me know how it goes

 

Usually, when a HDD is a brand new one, those annoying clicking noises that the HDD makes doesn't mean that it's spoiled/deficit. One possible cause is that the HDD's Advanced Power Management(APM) and Advanced Acoustic Management(AAM) is not configured to work with your current enviroment given there's difference in your voltage/static in your area.

Try this small utility first before going through the hassle with DELL/Alienware (unless you love their support). it could solve your problem.

http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/

if it solves the clicking sound, you can permanently change your APM and AAM settings using HDDScan http://hddscan.com/

 

Thank you Copyninja, I will give these a go. I've gone through the Dell website trying to get a replacement, we'll see what they say too.

 

Exactly what I was thinking, good one kakashi.

 

seagate drives suck

 

I tried both quiet hdd, and hddscan, nothing helps. I've asked Dell to send me a replacement drive.

 

So after some procrastination on my part, and after Dell telling me to call Alienware tech support, who told me to talk to Dell, I talked to Luis at Alienware who is hooking me up with a replacement hard drive.

I asked for a Western Digital, but he said he couldn't find one at that time, so he offered to send me a 500g Seagate. I'll try it, and pray for no clicking.