T400 - Why is my hard drive so loud?

I hear access noise almost constantly.

1. Either hard drives always get accessed, and I've never noticed the noise.

2. I have a virus that constantly access the hard drive

3. My hard drive makes more noise than others


Why so loud?! BTW, I have the 80gb crappiest one.

 

If you were running Vista I’d tell you it does a lot in the background—indexing, defragging, prefetching and whatnot—so I’m not sure what to tell you. Perhaps the noise is normal. While I bought this notebook with the 80GB drive as well, I quickly replaced it with a third-party 250GB drive—that happens to only be audible when accessed in the quietest of rooms.

 

For what it's worth, the 250/5400 drive mine shipped with is pretty much silent -- Seagate Momentus 5400.4

The WD Scorpio Black 250/7200 I replaced it with is also essentially silent.

 

I have the 250/5400 fujitsu...i can only hear it when i place my ear over the palmrest, but i do notice it never seems to spin down completely, not even for a second...the hdd light always flickers for a quick moment or two each second or couple of seconds...i'm running XP w/SP3 and have have unused ports/devices disabled in bios/device manager and removed unnecessary fonts, as well. I'm happy with my battery life, but imagine i could get even better times if the hdd actually idled... does anyone know what could be access the drive?... i still have system restore enabled out of paranoia, could that be the culprit?...haven't tested that theory out yet, myself... thanks!

 

I avoid Fujitsu drive, but that is based onmy experience. WD, Seagate or Hitachi are the way to go. As someone mentioned WD Scorpios are very quiet.

However the real issue is Vista - indexing and fetching and such. I disabled the Indexing/Search (I use a different search tool), and disabled Superfetch as well. My system runs a LOT better.

 

I've ordered a 160GB @ 7200rpm. Any idea what HDD i'd get ?

 

I agree, I would've chosen Seagate if I could, but had opted to upgrade my hdd from Lenovo with my order this time...at the time, it was a better value for $60 than any other deal out...i didn't expect to see Seagate 7200rpm or 320gb hdd deals quite so soon for similar cost...

I'm running XP w/SP3 and have indexing off, can't think of what else i can turn off besides System Restore, but i'd prefer to keep it on...

 

I've got a Hitachi drive running XP SP3. I turned off system restore... not sure about indexing. I guess my room was a little too quiet. I can't expect it to NOT make noise. I just got back to my apartment though, after Hurricane Ike so I'll pull out my T61 and do a comparison.

 

FWIW, I also have the 80GB drive, and it is silent. In a room with no noise, I hear the fan over the hard drive, and the fan is nearly silent, too. You might have a bad drive. Make sure to have backups!

 

Yea, I would've expected to hear the fan from the top left (near the vent), but instead, i hear the fan over the hard drive, although only in a room that is completely silent...i don't hear the harddrive itself, just the fan near there...it seems that fan is always on, is there a way to adjust that to some balanced setting?...i can only hear the harddrive fan in a silent room, so it's not the noise that's bothering me, but rather I'm curious why it has to run constantly...is it necessary because of the harddrive?

 

i dont know why be my hardrive is quiet, but there is the fan near my hardrive that is on all the time, its not loud, (only when i am in a room so quiet) is that normal? my t400 is never hot so i dont know.

 

My T400 exhibits the same behavior, t3a...the hdd/sys fan is ALWAYS running, no matter what...i can only hear it in a quiet bathroom, but still, makes it hard to think in there...under normal conditions, i don't hear it, but wonder what's the impact on battery life to have a fan that's constantly on...it doesn't even stop when the laptop is idling, despite RMclock reducing VID and core temps...it's funny that i can't hear the fan near the rear/corner exhaust vent, but i hear the internal fan near the hdd...still a very quiet machine...

 

Which begs the point. How much critical thinking are you doing in the bathroom ?

 

I have an x200, so this may not be applicable, but the hard drive is usually all I hear. The system fan on this machine is quieter than any other computer I have ever owned. The hard drive is fequently accessed and I do hear it (normal seek noises).

I have a 5400 RPM Hitachi 160GB drive. It should also be noted that in Vista my drive NEVER spins down. This is primarily due to indexing and Superfetch (although those features do improve performance, and don't seem to hurt the battery so I leave them on). This noise is tolerable, but because it is the only noise my laptop makes it is making me consider an SSD if when their price becomes reasonable.

 

Just wanted to add that I have pretty much the same issue as other posters. The HD makes some noise: the "HD fan sound" is always audible when I'm plugged in and it makes accessing sounds frequently. Meanwhile the system fan is barely audible unless I'm gaming a little, and even then it doesn't bug me. I've played around with a friends T400 and it doesn't have the same issue. I guess I'll have to take it up with Lenovo eventually. Don't want to do that yet though, I really need it for now and otherwise it's been great.

P.S. I think the issue might have started when I started running Active Protection. My friend doesn't use it.

 

there is an hd fan and a cpu fan? maybe that explains why mine is so loud. the hd makes this air passing by, whoosh noise. except it's quite audible. it also doesn't change tone when the hard drive seeks/writes. but it's not the writing tick tick sound, it is independent of it.

cpu fan is off.

 

I was talking about the HD spinning (HD spindle motor sound, or HD spin sound might be a better term) not an actual fan making a sound coming out of the right side palmrest beneath the Thinkpad logo. Sorry if that was confusing, I've never heard of a notebook with a separate HD fan (could there be a separate fan on the right side of this notebook?). However, the sound is different than the light clicking seek sound my HD makes when its being accessed. The fan sound on the left side of my laptop (near the escape key) is almost never audible unless I'm gaming. I'm editing this on my first post to avoid confusion.

 

Hi! I have the same problem with my harddrive (5400 U/min; 250 GB; SATA; Active Protection System). Theres a prettly loud (in my opinion) "fan noise" permanently coming from the right bottom side (Thinkpad logo area).

Is there anything I can to to stop this noise?

 

This hard drive "air noise" can be heard on notebooks with quiet fans (i.e. ThinkPads and MacBooks) in very quiet rooms.

If you go to a busy coffee shop, all the computer noise goes away.

 

Ok - but my problem is that I'm always working in very quiet rooms. :-( I had an HP nx7000 before and most of the time it was _completely_ silent. No hard drive spinning/fan noise at all.

It seems that I have to change my hard drive manually... so does anyone know a list of _completely_ silent hard drives which are compatible with a Thinkpad T400?

Thank you,
altes-kind

 

seagate ones with 7200rpm

 

I have a T400 with 160gb 7200rmp drive (ST9160411AS)

The clicking sound is very loud and always present (I am running vista). Is there a problem with this drive then?

My friend has a X200 with also 160gb 7200rmp drive and it's very silent with no noise at all.

 

with the low capacity drives, the reader assembly needs to move around more to access the same amount of information as compared to higher capacity hdd, since most of them use single platter.

Just like in a high resolution screen would require less page scrolling using a loud scroll wheel mouse as compared to the low resolution screen viewing the same information, using that analogy (pretty bad i know) you would think the low density are louder as compared to high density screen. Sorry for the imperfect analogy.