Vostro 1500 Clicking Noise?

Anyone else experiencing a sort of "clicking" noise on the left hand side of the notebook when just surfing the net or anything else that isnt intensive (gaming for example)?

Just wondering, because it sounds like theres a cd in there or soemthing and its making a clicking noise, just wondering if its normal

Thanks ^^

 

anyone? ;/

 

yes i get them but not very often. I called dell about it. They told me it was the hard drive...it was one of two things, either the hard drive has something wrong with it and will crash at anytime, or its just the hard drive starting/stopping spinning. she told me to mail it in so they could look at it, but I can't afford to not have my laptop. so i am hoping for the latter.

 

it is just the hard drive starting up and spinning down

 

But it keeps clicking softly, then one loud click :S Is that the same thing?

 

How long have you had it? It may be vista indexing your files for faster searching.

 

i've had it since thursday

 

My Vostro is also doing this but I have XP.

I received the Vostro August 30th and have not noticed this clickign sound until recently. It clicks constantly while idol...about once per second and once every hour or so there will be one loud click.

The hard drive light on the Vostro flashes on every click. Is this normal? I only find it annoying when it is extremely quiet while I'm using the laptop.

 

Arebus it is EXACTLY the same thing for me, but you probably described it better

 

Yeah, my 1500 makes the clicking and the louder pop/click hybrid noise, too. I'm hoping that its just a loud hard drive design, and not a sign of dying.

 

Lol yea it has been driving me crazy. It's like it is constantly loading something even when I have nothing running and I'm sitting there idle on the windows screen. Will this problem go away? I'm contemplating returning this laptop considering it has the AUO screen and now a loud hard drive.

Why did I go with a dell...

 

What size is the HDD that makes the clicking? Are they all 160GB?

 

Mine is 160 gigs....5400 rpm

 

Yea, it clicks a little, but no big deal to me. Mine has a really nice AUO WXGA screen, so I wouldn't even think about returning it. Would be pretty crazy IMO.

 

Mine is the 160 5400 rpm. Mine doesn't click once a minute or anything like that. Mine will be silent and then out of no where a crunch sound followed by a high pitched beep sound. It usually only happens once a day after using it for over an hour.

 

It's still really worrying that a brand new laptop dos this no?

 

Do u all have a seagate hard drive, clickers?

 

Yes, mine is a Seagate. I am planning on returning the laptop I just don't want to pay a restocking fee.

 

how do i check if mine is seagate?

 

i think mine is a SATA?

 

--sry, double post--browser froze

 

@alkaeda -- SATA is a type of interface, SEAGATE is a manufacturer.
i don't like your name -- did it occur to you some ppl might be offended?

to check your manufacturer: use device manager (i forgot the exact steps, i use linux now)

in short:
the cause of the clicking of the hard drive is Seagate's head protection technology. When the drive is idle, the read/write head goes to park, so that it is not hovering on top of the disks, and so, less time is spent hovering on the disks, which means less chance that the heads will be above, and therefore, hit the disk if you drop your notebook.

the way that seagates park their heads are with a ramp, like a little ramp that the heads go up so that they are out of the way. this makes the noise. Anyway, the click at the hard drive light activity makes sense because the head is unloading from the ramp.

you should be happy with segate, it is one of the best manufacturers. They are so confident they give 5 year warranties if you buy the disk yourself. Other methods of head parking are inferior, (some requiring the head to rest on the disk, and when the disk spins up, the head DRAGS on the disk until the disk causes enough air movement to create a cushion of air for the head to ride on)

i used to have a seagate, and it clicked sometimes too. Considering that all seagates do this in this forum, we can consider that it is normal

do not be alarmed that my signature says that my hard drive crashed -- this was because of the vibrating optical drive. I was installing the SIMS 2 and the drive was vibrating the entire notebook, and because installations require the drive to be active, the drive heads were unparked during the vibration and that killed the drive. besides, the crash clicking is very fast.

just my opinion. --don't sue me if i'm wrong, i'm only 15.

 

Thank you for the informative post The clicking sound was making me worry my hard drive was gonna be fried any day. My clicking has become more excessive however...pretty much a click per second. There is also a louder click sound every hour or so.

I'm calling Dell tomorrow to figure out my options.

 

that sounds like too much -- mine clicked maybe once every 5 minutes

 

My HD is a samsung. Hope my sound is the head parking

 

Mine clicks like ever couple seconds, But I only notice it at night when Im just surfin the net. Drives me bonkers.

 

Mine is doing exactly the same thing, clicking regularly (every 15 seconds or so, longer at idle)

It is a Hitachi 7200rpm 160GB SATA (Vista OS)

I am wondering if it is more likely a software thing, seeing as there are several different drives doing the same thing, though I am aware one user has had problems with windows xp also.

Almost the first thing I did when I got me toy was to format, repartition and reinstall, minus all Dell stuff. I have disabled indexing, closed every program i can safely shut down without causing system failure, disconnected network connections.

I don't know what more I can do, it is driving me mad, and I am almost convinced it is chewing battery life as well. I will keep searching, but please let us all know if you come up with a solution!!!

 

I bought a Vostro 1500 a month ago, have a Seagate Momentus 160 GM 5400 RPM SATA drive. My drive clicks at random intervals when idle, approx once every min. or so. I have done some research on this and am pretty sure that the reason for this is as Lambchops above describes - the head parks when idle. If you want to confirm this yourselves, download the HD Tune utility and run it. If you click on the 'Health' tab of HD tune, you can see the 'Load Cycle Count' property, in the data column - it will go up by one for every click. However, it will not go up when HD Tune is actually running, because HD Tune will access the drive every 5 seconds or so - my drive needs to be idle for longer than this to have the problem occur. Actually, this means that if you want to clicking sound to go away, just have HD Tune running all the time (or some other utility that accesses the hard drive every few seconds).

I called Dell tech support about this - they are not sure what the problem is - but they are going to ship me a replacement hard drive just in case the problems is with a defective hard drive.

 

Probably a background process constantly accessing the HD.

Ctr-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager.

Click on the "CPU" column near the top of the window. This will rank order the processes in terms of CPU usage. Notice if any non-SYSTEM processes are constantly using CPU time (assuming your system is otherwise idle). If there are, kill the process by right-click-->end process. Does the HD clicking go away?

I'm using XP Pro with the Nvidia 8600gt, Vostro 1700. An nvidia process called "nvscc.exe" or something similar loads up at boot and constantly accesses the HD (once a second). It was driving me nuts until I discovered the source of the clicking. Doesn't seem to be an essential process.

 

Still looking for a solution...

 

hm im kinda new to this forum but it seems to generally be the case that ppl on here will find problems where there are none, i mean is every member a perfectionist or something? i got my new vostro 1500 today it has a wxga+ auo screen and its lovely! also the hard drive clicking is fine, ive heard a good few hard drives go bust and believe me you would know, the sound of a broken hard drive is very obvious and very scratchy. as for the frequency of clicks on the hard drive in my vostro its the 160gb 5400rpm btw sometimes its several times a second and like now it has stopped completely, i only ever notice if the room is completely silent, i have absoloutely no worries about the hard drive especially as it is seagate, there hard drives dont brake often. i can comfortably assure 99% of you that you are being paranoid. if you want a silent note book get one with a solid state drive

 

I have the 120 gb 5400 rpm drive, and I do get very loud, single clicking noises, especially while gaming. It's the hallmark of a cheapo hard drive. I wouldn't worry, but nor do I expect these to last extraordinarilly long, either. Then again, for what we paid, what should we expect?

 

in my case, yes

 

i think users of this laptop will have to accept that dell have cut corners somewhere inorder to sell it for this price. i mean mines has:
T7300
2GB Ram
160GB 5400rpm
8600GT
wxga+ screen
vista ultimate

all that for £705
what more do you want?
i personally am very happy with my purchase

 

I phoned dell up to complain about the famous Headphone socket/CPU noise and for some reason they sent me a new HDD thinking that would fix it.

So they took my Seagate, gave me and Hitachi and I get all the clicks now... so annoying. With desktop's I've always prefered Seagates for this reason, they are quiet!

So I just phoned DELL and they said they are going to make an exception and upgrade me to a 250GB which they are dropping me off tomorrow.

£100 upgrade for free, wicked. Hope its not hitachi lol

 

My m1330 clicks as well...I was wondering who else have this problem...mine clicks every second! It's annoying as hell.

 

I'm with Weogy104, this forum has some really picky folks, which I like. If you want to read info about a product, you want picky people, and not the I'm happy with anything folks.

I have the headphone buzz, and a Dell dispatch pending to swap out the motherboard. The concensus is the headphone hardware gain is cranked up picking up feedback. A new mobo "may" fix this issue. I got a great AUO screen, and everything else works great. The hard drive clicks periodically, but overall for $907 im quite happy.

 

Might want to check this thread out for a solution to the clicking noise:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425&highlight=dell+clicking+noise

 

Hi,

I recently purchased a Vostro 1500. After using it for a few hours straight, the hard drive started making the noises described. I Googled around to see if there was a solution.

From what I understand is that the hard drive keeps on parking and spinning up to save energy. This happens automatically. If you right click on your desktop, go to screen saver, and then go to power options, there is an option to have the hard drive turn off after a certain amount of time that it is idle. If you choose "never" then it appears like it takes care of the problem. It has been working for the last 45 minutes for me. So I have not tried this solution for too long, but the constant clicking every 20 seconds did go away. I figure the system no longer parks the hard drive so it just keeps spinning. I think that it is stupid to make it turn off and on so often, as just doing that can probably shorten its life span. A continuously spinning hard drive with no static or power outages can work for quite a long time if cooled properly. This turning on and off thing does not make much sense, especially if you are hooked up to a power outlet. Even on batter power, it is still annoying.

Hope this helps.