XPS 1530 Hard drive noises?

Hello, I am about to order an XPS 1530 with the 320 GB 5.400 rpm harddrive, but I have heard that these make some really annoying noises from time to time, so my question is - is that normal or are these harddrives sort of defective? And I have only heard of that issue regarding the said 320 GB model. What if I buy a 400 GB hard drive? Do these make these noises as well? I am really concerned right now because I have heard quite a few things about the XPS 1530 that just didn't sound right... like the DVD drive noises, the hard drive noises, the display lottery...

Oh, and here is another question but I don't want to start another thread:
I'll be using Photoshop a lot, so will I experience a big difference between the T8300 and the T9300 processor? I know this has been asked before but all I found out was that there will be virtually no difference in gaming.

 

I don't hear any unusual "hard drive noise" in my system, and I have a WD hard drive.. its been fine. May be what you 'heard' about these noises is because the drives were faulty or simply because there were some services running causing activity on the hard disk?

Same with DVD drive.. the noise is there only during loading / ejecting the cd/dvd... and its quiet normal with slot load drives.. otherwise its pretty fine.. and if u are talking about the spinning disc while watching a movie or something, well, IMHO thats kind of understandable considering the sleek design.. if u r getting a drive with Optiarc, then there is a new update from Dell for improving on the acoustics...

display?? well, I have a samsung and I am happy with it.. Its awesome infact.. But you might want to check with Dell and find out what display' they can get you right now.

And I think the T8300 should keep you good with photoshop.. though you might want to think more about the RAM options available and the graphics card in terms of better photoshop experience.

 

Well, I've read stuff about people reporting these annoying noises, and I think they all had the said 320 GB model, so I thought that was either normal or a lot of harddisks were faulty.

Ok, so do you have the opriarc drive? Can you tell me what the sound is actually like? (with the new firmware and without)

Yeah, I've heard that the LG display is the best, but the others (AUO and Samsung) are still not bad. I would order a WXGA+ display, they don't have any grainy displays there, do they?

I plan to order 4 GB of RAM, I guess that's the maximum (especially for 32-Bit Vista). I was just wondering because the upgrade from a T8300 to a T9300 is quite expensive while the difference is just 100Mhz and 3 MB of L2-Cache.

Thanks for your post!

 

Well, in my case, I dont have any noise from the hard disk, except when there some activity like restore point or scan or when I am working on the system.. this is the normal noise. nothing unusual, IMHO.

I dont have the optiarc drive, still I dont feel uncomfortable with the noise... Its been fine and OK for me. In fact while watching DVD', I don't here the disc spinning at all, probably because it gets drowned out with the audio... in any case, the spinning noise is not something loud or annoying.

Samsung is good here.. I have read lots of posts about issues with displays and such.. but with whatever is available here in Europe (and I think u might have similar config options like here in Italy, since our laptop' would be made in Poland), its been great.. particularly the Samsung displays.. I have at least a dozen of my frs here with the M1530, and all have samsung displays.. and we are enjoying it.

If the upgrade is expensive, then I wouldn't chose it.. (Btw, how much is it? when I got my system, the upgrade was pretty cheap, dont remember how much was it exactly though)

 

The T9300 costs another 100€, which I could afford, but if possible, I'd like to spare that money. I'm also not going to do any 3D rendering or video encoding or something where you can actually measure the seconds it takes to perform a task, I just want to use Photoshop with big files without waiting for several minutes to acually load them (like my current Athlon 3000+ does).

 

You should be fine without the upgrade, IMO.. and may be u could channel in that extra 100 for something else...

 

I have a Samsung HD, and there is only the normal HD working noise, very normal, but you can find here in the forum "quite a few" tweeks to make it quieter.
About the optical drive noise, it is a realy cool noise when loading and ejecting the CD, and quiet enough on reading.
Don't let some people expecting a HighTec device with several moving parts to sound like all of them were "solid" hold you down.
It is a great machine, stylish and powerful. I'm very proud of my 1530

Cheers

 

Ok then, I guess I will order my XPS 1530 in the next days Thanks for your help!

By the way, it is kind of odd that I can use a Dell coupon which is supposed to be used on orders over 1250€ while my order is actually under that price. Has anyone encountered that before?

 

I would order the cheapest harddrive from Dell and then buy a Seagate 7200.3 320GB myself. 67 euros.
http://geizhals.at/a339764.html

If it clicks there are tweaks to solve it.

 

I just checked but Dell doesn't offer a cheaper hard drive than the 320 GB 5.400 rpm version, just a 250 GB version if I choose a different base model, but the prices are almost the same or, at the worst, higher. Nice idea though

 

Hi i ordered mine with a 400gb 5,400rpm which arrived as a samsung, last night while playing around in bed my drive started to click a fair amount and the same this morning.

Oddly enough its stopped now, im a big Seagate fan after years of Barracuda use and zero failures while all the other drives died around me and hopefully they will bring out a 500gb drive next year so i will bear it until something betters around.

Seems funny that its various models that do this as well.

 

It's possible to make the drive stop clicking using certain tweaks.

 

So how does it work? Can you provide a link?

 

The information is spread over several threads.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=27
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=303144

Solutions include: NHC, HDTune, hdparm