Rep regarding Hard Drive Noise & T61 Case issues

I spoke to a rep today regarding the hd marble dropping noise (seagate 100gig 7200rpm) and he will be shipping me a new hard drive (different brand, possibly hitachi) along with free recovery CDs.

My t61 case creaks on the lcd bezel and has give on the left part of the palm rest. They said I have a year to send it back and they will "re-case" it. I plan on doing this when I have more free time.

In both cases they cover all ship costs, its just a matter of waiting.

all in all I am rather happy with the support.

 

What type of warranty do you have to receive this kind of support?

 

I have the same marble noice issue on my seagate....it really doesn't bother me as much, and from what I've heard it doesn't really cause any damage.

I just realized yesterday that my casing is kind of uneven on the right side of the palm rest. It's very slight but the little rubber thingy on the bottom of the laptop doesn't completly touch the surface it's on. Does anyone else have this issue? I'm a little worried because you can kind of flex the keyboad and that side of the computer when the lid is open. When the lid is closed it's still really sturdy and impossible to bend. Luckily that is the side the hard drive and optical drive are on.

I really don't want to send this thing in. I finally ran my clean install, but once school starts I won't have time to send this in until may 2008.

 

I have the same problem with the left side of the wrist rest. It just seems like no matter how many times they rehouse the laptop, it wont help. I realized this when i installed my ram and saw the design flaw. The right side of the wrist rest has a screw all the way at the edge where the one on the left side cannot have a screw since the PC card/media reader(or express card) slots are there.

 

Hmm....the only flex i get on the palm rest is in the middle where the touchpad and mouse buttons are. Especially in the area right between the keyboard and the touchpoint buttons- the palmrest is slightly bulging. That is probably the most annoying thing to me about my T61.

 

I have standard warranty, 1 year

didnt spend anything extra for warranty

 

do you have anything in your PC card slot right now? Just by looking at the design, i bet the simplest solution would be to shove something solid into the slot.

 

No, I don't have anything in the slot, but I don't see how filling it would solve anything. The flex is in the middle, not on the left. The flex specifically is the 3 mm piece of plastic between the spacebar and the 3 touchpoint buttons. Basically, the damn palmrest around the 3 touchpoint buttons is slightly bulging.

 

Has anyone found anymore information regarding the marble dropping noise? The rep sent me a new hard drive (seagate momentus 7200.1) and it still has the same issue. Could it be an issue with the system board? They offered me the option for depot repair, but i'm not sure if i'll avail that option if the noise has no effect on the drive.

 

Did you have to send the old drive back to them?

 

Yes (10char)

 

Did they *specifically* say it would be a different brand HDD they would be sending you? if they did then you should complain to them as they did not. Maybe that will solve the problem.

 

No, I actually requested the seagate since it runs quieter than the hitachi. The rep thought the particular seagate that I had might have been part of a defective batch. However, the replacement that I received was manufactured 2 months later but still has the "marble dropping" sound. I just want to know if my data is at risk of being damaged?

 

HDDs can be noisy. It's probably normal for that particular make/model.

 

you get the new hard drive first then ship the old one back

I requested the hitachi and received it last week

 

I dont think you should be worrying about the damage. Mine makes the same noises as well. I may end up asking for the Hitachi now that I have seen from this thread that you can request it as long as it is under warranty.

 

If you guys do some searching, like I have, even as I don't own a Seagate in the first place, you'll find out that the marble dropping sound is a flaw in the Seagates. It doesn't hurt your data, it's not going to damage the drive, it just makes an annoying sound, and it has been something that's plagued the 7200.1 drives since they came out. Some 7200.1 drives don't do it- their owners are lucky, but most aren't.

 

Are the rumors about the hitachi true that it makes more noise when read/writing data? How about the durability of the drive?

 

Has anyone from seagate or IBM actually confirmed this information? Everyone that I have talked to at seagate or IBM has said that any abnormal noise coming from the HDD may evidence a defective drive.

 

anyone know?

 

hitachi seems fine, if there is a noise difference, I cant really notice it

 

Did IBM send you the 7k200 (perpendicular recording) or the 7k100?

 

Hitachi make great drives.

 

Don't triple-post. Amend your posts with the edit function.

No one from Seagate is going to confirm that their product makes hideous noises. But, if you lift your fingers to do some Googling, you will find that everything I've said is true.

 

what johnny has posted is true, Seagate, Lenovo and even Apple know of the issue

the only thing that is not verified is if the Seagate noise effects the life of the drive (long term).

There are a lot of opinions but I doubt Seagate will launch an investigation. They will probably swap out the drives as they die (that is if they die) and probably resolve the issue as quietly as possible in future releases.

However my experience tells me any HD noise issue should be dealt with before losing data. Especially if some users have the noise and others do not.

What worries me (and what made me trade in) were the possible effects on

1) the natural wear and tear of the motors
2) if it uses more read/write cycles vs what the drive naturally should use

 

looks like the 7k100

model #HTS721010G9SA00

 

Thanks batman for your response. I have similar concerns as well. I am noticing more of these "marble" sounds with the new seagate drive that IBM sent me compared to the one that shipped with my system.

If you look at newegg for reviews of the seagate 7200.1, no poster makes any mention of this "marble" noise. This leads me to believe that the problem may be with the drives that seagate manufactures for IBM/Lenovo, or the problem lies internally with the system board and the active protection system.

 

Is the Hitachi a 7200 rpm drive? Same GB?

When ordering can I request it over the Seagate?

 

My T61 came with the Seagate drive. It made the marble dropping sounds (slight), and it started to fail after three weeks (Monday). The computer constantly freezed when I tried to open various programs, notably the iTunes setup file. It was constantly seeking when it wasn't doing so before. I even turned off indexing, superfetch, and the various other ones that I thought would affect it. I ran the PC-Doctor HDD test during boot up and it failed the SMART short and extensive self test; it also failed the surface scan test. That's when I called Lenovo support.

One thing to note is that they were really friendly. I just told them which tests it failed and they offered to send out a new drive right away, in addition to recovery disks. I haven't received the recovery disks yet, so I just opted to clean install using the Upgrade Anytime DVD.

I think I still hear some of the same sounds from the new Seagate. I'm not entire certain that it has anything to do with the failed drive. Maybe some of you can also run the tests.

Sorry if that was way more information than you wanted to know.

 

Again, if you GOOGLE, you will find that multiple laptop manufacturers that used seagate 7200.1 drives will have this issue, including Apple.

 

Johnny, why are you assuming that I haven't already checked up on the issue? One of the first steps I took was to google the issue and I did find the problems with Macbooks in the past. However, none of these posts ever came up with a definitive answer as to whether this issue affects the drive longterm. It appears that no one ever did a follow up report. Sure, now we may all dismiss this "marble" sound as nothing, but 1 or 2 years down the road the drive may fail. Now, hearing from Jidonsu that his seagate drive failed should spark concern in those people with affected drives. Furthermore, there is evidence that this problem does not occur on ALL Seagate 7200.1 drives (except those mostly in apples and thinkpads), so it may be a compatibility issue. All of these questions were not answered by my "google" search and I have decided to follow up by posting on this forum for more definitive answers.

I do not expect you to fully understand the problem as you do not even have this drive in your notebook. Please try to post constructive comments or specific links from your "google" search that may better help us solve this issue. Thanks for your cooperation.

 

You are absolutely welcome, but please let me take the time to explain something you happened to dig up with Google.

You were close to blaming Lenovo and its implementation of the Active Protection System for the hard drive issues. Obviously, pointing fingers at Lenovo is unwarranted because multiple brands of laptops get those noises too.

My constructive commenting comes in the form of pointing out that you either didn't do research that could easily be done OR you did do the research but can't comprehend what the research means. It seems to be the latter if you are still wondering whether or not Seagate is to blame. I am not obligated to talk about every single thing that everyone is talking about in this thread. I choose to talk about how Seagate is responsible for a large number of its 7200.1 drives making marble-dropping noises, and that the laptop manufacturers aren't causing it. I think I've helped you enough in that matter. Thank YOU for understanding.

 

If it was my hard drive I would be wondering if there is any long term effect. The problem is that it is too hard for a typical user to do a long term study on a HDD. Most users won't take the time to do it and, as already posted, Seagate isn't going to prove and publish that their 7200.1 is crap.

What happens when a HDD like jidonsu's dies in three weeks? You are going to think it is because of the marble dropping noise. Maybe, maybe not. All brands of hard drives occasionally die after three weeks or one year or two years. Some are dead right out of the box. I just happens and it's too hard to predict (other than googling and reading reviews). Fortunately, most of the time they last for years.

It seems you have three options:
1. Have Lenovo send you another one.
2. Live with the noise.
3. Buy a different HDD.

No matter what option you choose... BACK UP YOUR DATA. Any HDD can die without any notice or warning sign.

 

Could you please post a link from your "research" that tells us what different brands of laptops have this issue? I could only find this issue reported in Apple Macbooks and Lenovo Thinkpads.

I ran a test with the seagate drive in a 2.5" external enclosure and monitored the noise coming from the drive. For the 2-3 hours that I had the drive connected, I did not notice a single "marble-dropping" noise. However, when I put that drive into my notebook, I started to notice the "marble-dropping" sound. This incident is what made me believe that it could be a conflict with the notebook.

Hopefully and probably, the incident with Jidonsu was a coincident, but just to err on the side of caution I will have my data backed up as long as I have this drive. I already asked the rep to send me the Hitachi drive. Will report back.

Johnny, constructive commenting would be helping to find a solution to the problem and not incorrectly asserting that someone didn't do their "homework."

 

Google shows not only notebooks have the problem, even mac minis.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=135171&page=4

I apologize for assuming you did not do homework. It was an assumption on my part because the conclusions you came to are horridly erroneous, such that you'd be less embarrassed by saying you didn't do your homework. So it seems then that you are doing your homework, you're just getting all the answers wrong. You know that:
1. It happens with Thinkpads.
2. It happens in Macboks.
3. It happens in Mac mini.

So it is a laptop vs. desktop issue? No. Is it a laptop-brand issue? No. It is an hard drive shock protection issue? No. (mac mini does not have that)

I am not telling you that you can find the answer to your question by doing more homework. I am telling you that you can find that your answers are WRONG by doing more homework. Now that's called constructive commenting.

 

Johnny, thanks for posting a link for once. Anyways, back to the on-topic discussion.

Just to clarify, the problem with the mac mini's was with the 80gb 4200rpm seagate drive, so it is not an apples to apples comparison (pardon the pun).

Apples and Thinkpads seem to have this drive noise problem in common. If you look at the newegg reviews or search for this problem on the internet, I do not see a mention of this problem occuring in Toshibas, HPs, etc. I'm sure people using this drive have various makes/models of computers. Also, there seems to be no drive noise issue when put into an external drive form (see my previous post).

Based on the information at hand, if you would like to be cautious, ask the rep to exchange your seagate 7200 for a hitachi drive. Otherwise, please keep us posted on how your seagate performs. Thanks!