Strange Sound/Beeping Inspiron 1520

I was away for a few hours and came back to the laptop and got a weird sound and some beeping. It only happened as soon as I came on to get the Laptop back to the desktop from sleep/hybernation/whatever. It sounded like it didn't really come from the speakers. Does the harddrive do any beeping? If so, is that normal/anything to be concerned about?

 

That has been reported many times. Some said it is from the optical drive, some said from the hard drive. I hear that beep around once a week.

 

You get it? On a 1520? Anything to be alarmed about?

 

I have the same problem.

 

Do you by any chance have samsung HDD in your laptop?

I've heard this from mine and its pretty loud. From all the info available so far it seems to be hard drive related. Samsungs have the problem.

Download the drive utility for HD250MI or whichever model you have from www.samsunghdd.com
Disable acoustic management. This will make the drive quieter and faster. Seriously samsung, why bother with something thats supposed to make the drive quieter when it barely makes any noise anyway! Except with AAM on its continuously shutting down and parking to make it quieter. Thats loud!
With it off it does no such thing and the computers faster too!

And all this parking heads does damage too. My G sense error rate has fallen from 100 to 27 in SMART! From 62 to 27 in 3 days is not good. This happened before I disabled AAM but I fear the damage is already done.
Its not shown a single sign of failure yet so it might be lying! All other smart values are fine.

 

Yes, I get this problem too on my 1420. Most of the time it's just a one-second high-pitched beep, but sometimes I recalled it beeping twice. It definitely comes from the right side of the laptop, so it's likely coming from the hard drive. It's quite disturbing and annoying to get the beeps, I was working in the library when it let out one of these beeps and people started looking at me...

 

That's possibly a system warning that your HD is on it's way out; or there is some other problem with your computer (it doesn't come from the HD itself; rather from the motherboard.) Search this forum as there is a thread discussing the issue. You may want to contact Dell about replacing your HD if it's happening on a regular basis. (I've had my 1420 for 5 weeks and I got those beeps twice within a 24 hr period about 2 1/2 weeks ago; nothing before or since.)

 

Interesting. I have had this happen 2-3 times while I have had my Inspiron 1520. The HD called it quits last week. I could support that theory. It did it while my HD was buzzing.

 

Definitely a hard drive issue then. I don't like the fact that peoples HDDs fail after this problem. Which hard drive have you got? Can check under control panel, system, device manager, drives

Mines a samsung 250JI.
Since disabling accoustic management using a utility from samsunghdd.com I have not heard beep, and there's no ocassional loud clicks from the hard drive. There a few hard drive parking noises but these are soft and like any other laptop on the market. My SMART values haven't got any worse since then either.

If you have a samsung hard drive I seriously recommend you disable accoustic management as in my case it not only made the computer faster but also quieter as these horrid sounds no longer are emitted. These sounds are not harmless, in mine they were the sound of the hard drive destroying itself! Each time the SMART values got worse and worse. Switch accoustic management off and all is normal. I suspect its a driver issue between vista, dell, the samsung HDD controller, and how vista interprets accoustic management because turning it off has cured the problem so far. And the whole computer just runs smoother.

 

Forgot to mention, disabling accoustic management in BIOS does NOT work. The drive option overrides it.

 

Seems cured now but SMART values still getting worse.

SO has anyone got:
samsung hard drive in laptop
occasional fairly high pitched shrill beep (about every 2 days)
occasional loud clicks from hard drive (about 1-2 times/hour)
and what are peoples SMART values, particularly G sense error rate.
Not many 0s there and quite a few errors?

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HM250JI Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 51 40 Ok
(03) Spin Up Time 252 252 25 2687 Ok
(04) Start/Stop Count 100 100 0 2656 Ok
(05) Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 10 6 Ok
(09) Power On Hours Count 252 252 0 465 Ok
(0C) Power Cycle Count 100 100 0 278 Ok
(BF) G-sense Error Rate 27 27 0 740432 Ok
(C0) Power Off Retract Count 100 100 0 84 Ok
(C2) Temperature 124 97 0 655398 Ok
(C4) Reallocated Event Count 100 100 0 27095 Ok
(C5) Current Pending Sector 100 100 0 807 Ok
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable 100 100 0 3027 Ok
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 252 252 0 0 Ok
(C8) Write Error Rate 252 252 0 0 Ok

Power On Time : 465
Health Status : Ok