dell inspiron 1520 problem

Hello everybody! My specs are T7300 CPU, 2 Gb ram, HDD WD 160 Gb serial ata, nvidia 8600M GT 256 Mb. My problem: from time to time I hear a noise in HDD area, but I'm not sure if the noise is from the speaker or HDD. The noise it's like a soft clank or something like that. I've run the diagnostics from the boot sequence, and it found everything ok. I have win XP installed. Any ideas? Is there any fix?

 

Well there can be several reasons for this, and it really depends on the type of the noise.

If you have a Seagate 160GB 5,400rpm HDD, than don't worry too much, it's the HDD "head parking" sound. You can check this out by looking at the HDD LED light and see if it blinks at the same time you hear the noise. The noise is especially noticeable when your laptop is idle.

Then, you can try out my solution (just click the link in my sig).

 

no, my HDD is Western Digital.

 

Well, it still might be the "head-parking". But just to be sure, you should run a disk check utility (download from the WD homepage) or check out the SMART reports from your drive.

If it only happens 1-2 times in an hour, then don't worry (most of the time, it's either the power management or the drive acoustics, these can be changed either through a WD utility or NHC or your BIOS).

My suggestions:
I'd download the WD utility or run the HDD check in HD Tune. If everything checks out and you can still hear that noise, then download and install NHC and change the settings as described in my thread.

If that doesn't help, I'd call Dell and get a replacement just to be on the safe side.

 

You should be ok unless the clicking becomes persistant then you will need to back up your HD because that is a sine of the HD about to crash

 

I've tried to use NHC but when I try to launch it I get an error message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". Why is that?

 

I've solved the NHC problem.

 

When your hard drive makes this 'soft clank' noise, do all the running programs on your screen pause? The hard drive which came with my 1520 had exactly this problem as you mentioned, yet when it came to running the diagnostic checks, it passed all of them.

After 2 hours speaking to one lady on online chat, the woman agreed to issuing me a replacement hard drive. The original one was a seagate, the replacement was a hitachi, and the problem was sorted.

 

How do you check what drive you have from which company? I tried looking in device manager, but to no avail...

 

Doesn't it list anything in Device Manager under Disk drives?

 

You can see the type of the HDD in device manager(at least in my case), but if can't just take out the HDD(wich I did also). 4 screws et voila!!

Related to noise after I used NHC and also modified the BIOS acoustic hdd setting to performance the noise dissapeared!! Evrika!!!

 

good for you then, and saves you the trouble of requesting a replacement.

 

hello
i have the same problem.I hear a noise in my hdd when the windows startup,and when i copy file the led is on. how can i solve this problem?
my hdd is hitachi 120 , cpu 2 , ram 2g,graphic 8600gt .
please help me.

 

Dose NHC work with windows vista?i download it and install it but is dose'nt work.is there any nhc version that run in vista?