What IS this Damned Noise? (not the whine)

I received and installed the replacement HD, a fujitsu, yesterday.
Haven't heard the beep since, it's still early days to confirm that replacing the HD fixed the issue. I will give an update in a week or so.

 

Very good. I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting your results.

I have not yet replaced my drive. I hadn't heard it in several weeks, roughly since I installed Vista SP1. I was being optimistic and thought that some part of the upgrade might have fixed it. Alas, just last night it did it again.

 

Exactly like me...
I was expecting it wouldn't happen anymore... but it did!
Still waiting for a response from HP... my process was escalated...
Yesterday they called me and told me to send them a "Performance Monitor" report file, wich I did... But I don't think that is going to solve anything...

 

Same here - replacement worked ok for a while, but then the clicking HD started again - but no beep this time.

 

Maybe this is a dumb question, but before buying a new drive, why don't you move the Toshiba externally to see if the sound is, indeed, produced by the drive?

 

when you have a technician come to replace the drive, how does it work to move your data from one disk to another? does the technician carry some tools to do the job , or you just get your data erased?

 

no - new drive, no transfer, and it goes through a setup install routine that takes a while to run on it's own with the factory image.

 

Issue seems to be resolved for me, It's been a week now and I haven't heard the beep.

So if you have the beep issue and a Toshiba HDD, I would recommend you call Dell to have it replaced and make sure they are not sending the same drive as a replacement.

 

Those are great news!
Unfortunatly I believe HP is messing with me... or atleast they don't have a clue about what they're doing...
I've told them many times that I was convinced that the beep was coming from the Toshiba HD! This Toshiba HD isn't the factory one that came with my laptop... they replaced my previous one with this Toshiba like 7 months ago! The beeping issue only started to appear since they replaced with the Toshiba, so I'm pretty sure the problem is this HD!
One of HP's technicians that is following my case keeps calling me and telling me to do some procedures, like:
- sending them a file from the Vista Performance Monitor
- disabling the "Beep" device in device manager
This last procedure is the most concerning one for me... it kind of tells me that they really don't have a clue about what they're doing...
I don't know what else to do...

 

Sorry to hear about your difficulties with HP, this might help you in dealing with them The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back

If you are going no where with their first line of support, it's time to escalate the issue.

 

Thank you so much for the link!
I've been looking for something like this for a very long time...

But right now, I haven't yet lost my faith with HP Support...
I do still believe that they are trying to unveal this issue of mine so they can take actions towards a specific solution!
I just think that in these cases, after a costumer like me having bought a laptop 9 months ago and since the 2nd month problems just start do appear and accumulate, company's like HP should do nothing less than ending all of this nonsense and replace the laptop with a new one!
Why should the costumer be forced to remain with a such problematic laptop for more than 7 months, having to do an incredible ammount of procedures, most of them envolving formatting the laptop and reinstalling all of it again?
HP's policies really should look towards costumer immediate satisfaction!

 

I have a Samsung drive (320GB) in my new 1420 and have had two "beeps" in the last 24 hrs...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3397320&postcount=1

 

Question. Do you get a similar sound just before the computer shuts down particularly when hibernating?

Its not the CPU whine. I have that too but RMclock gets rid of that.

I have exactly the same problem with my inspiron 1520. Usually the hard drive is quiet but occasionally it clicks (most often when not doing anything intensive), sometimes the clicks considerably louder and about 3 times a week will omitt a very loud beep similar to the noise an old PC used to make when beeping in bios. It sounds like a PC speaker sound (not sound card speaker, the basic PC speaker bleep). Quite high pitched.

Computer is not running hot, sometimes the fans not even switched it on. 45 CPU, 44 memory, 45 chipset, 46 graphics card.

Really irritating just cos its pretty loud!

The beep is shortly followed by a noise like the hard drive parking.
It seems linked to hard drive, does not cause a loss in performance and the system runs stable. Never crashes.
Hard drive is samsung 250GB.

Nice laptop. Noises are probably more obvious cos its such a quiet machine most of the time and runs very cool for a laptop.

 

If you have a samsung hard drive download the utility for it and mount it as a CD image. Boot from it and go into utility. Change AAM from FAST to QUIET. Since then not only have I not heard a beep, it hasn't clicked once either. Its may be a coincidence (1 day). Others say that fully disabling AAM also helps.
Since switching to quiet the system seems to be at least as fast.

However I've got problems. ACTIVE SMART has found a problem. Its in range (so no warnings yet) but G sense error rate is falling rapidly. 62 2 days ago, 55 yesterday, and 40 today! And for the last one it was on quiet. This doesn't sound good so the beep could indeed be an indication of a failing drive. The number of reallocated sectors went up from 5 to 6 today as well.

Computer working well but I'll back up to an external drive thats for sure.

 

Better idea. Disable AAM completely. Its designed to make things quieter but since I've switched it off I've not only heard no clicks or beeps (fingers crossed) but my computer is significantly faster. Access time is down from 21ms to 17ms in HD tune. So it seems samsung has invented worlds first acoustic management. It slows down PC, makes it noiser and even makes a shrill beep which damages the drive. Some smart values on mine are not looking healthy, G sense error rate is 27 (was 100) and its halved in 2 days. Hopefully since switching AAM off in samsung dos util ( www.samsunghdd.com) it won't get any worse. I've had it on for 3 hours and it hasn't clicked once (not even gently).

 

Since I contributed to this thread a few months ago, I thought I'd update...

I finally got around to upgrading hard drives. I replaced the OEM 160GB 5400rpm Samsung drive with a Western Digital 320GB 7200rpm.

Not only was it a nice improvement in terms of speed (and obviously space), I have not heard the noise since I have replaced the drive.

 

Okay, so I got a little disillusioned that this thread ended without definite resolution, especially after paulmt123's post 2 up from here. I found myself ubable to get the Samsung utility to run on my machine so real control over AAM wasn't possible. Changes to the BIOS AAM setting made no difference.

Well, the Samsung in my Dell XPS M1530 finally began to fail 5 months in, after non-stop clicking. The clicking had been more severe and more frequently accompanied by the beep recently. Dell tech support didn't want to make any link between the clicking (which they did realise was AAM related, to their credit) and the failure, but paul's gradually degrading drive seems consistent to my experience, not that I measured the stats in the way he did.

The failure was not total. Enough to stop Windows booting, I guess due to a damaged driver file/other essential file, but not enough to stop me getting the data I needed off it.

The Dell tech's explanation in a nutshell was that a small number of drives click under AAM, but most don't, and the option to set to silent (which did nothing for me) was for such drives. That doesn't sound right to me.

I can't say I know what to believe really caused my drive to fail - could have been coincidence, but my advice to anyone who has this problem ongoing and can't find a way around it, get better at backing up, and get ready for a failure. This went on long enough for me to convince myself it wasn't a problem, then suddenly it became one.

The replacement Toshiba Dell sent hasn't clicked at all. In the Dell notebooks at least, the problem seems to be Samsung specific.

 

Hi

I have a DELL XPS M1710 laptop in which I installed a 320GB HDD.

I also had the random loud beep from the HDD as well as the random clicking like the HDD heads were parking.

I followed the suggestions on this thread and downloaded the management software from Samsung and used it to turn my HDD acoustics management off.

I also disabled HDD Acoustics management in my laptop BIOS.

Since doing this, i have not had one click or beep from the drive whereas before I was getting random clicks and beeps daily.

Its now been about 4 days with no noise - so fingers crossed this appears to have corrected my problem.

Thanks for all your help people who submitted suggestions. It helped solve my annoying problem.

Cheers

Rod.