T61 hard drive noise

My T61's Hitachi 5400RPM 160GB drive is about the loudest laptop drive I've ever heard. The read noise is okay, and if you hold it to your ear you get the typical electronic beeping and such. However, it makes a constant whooshing noise like a fan running all the time. It drives me nuts even in moderately noisy environments. I'm getting to the point where I think it would be worth paying $130 for a replacement Seagate.

Has anyone had any luck modifying acoustic settings with the Hitachi utilities? Would changing the drive void the warranty? Is the equivalent Seagate drive significantly quieter in while idling?

 

If it bothers you that much call support and get a new one.

 

I've read several posts here and on other sites describing the same sort of loud fan-like noise, so I don't think a new one will make much of a difference.

 

I do think that the Hitachi's are louder then the Seagates. I have 2 7200k rpm Hitachi's and 1 7200 rpm Seagate, all 2.5 inch drives. The 2 Hitachi's are definetly a tad louder, but not much. What I think is more annoying on the Seagates is the head load/unload stuff they do. They park the hard drive heads when the drive isn't access for like 3 seconds. Since Vista likes to access hard drives often the end result is that the heads park and unpark all the freaking time. When new I didn't usually hear it much but the load/unload cycle has gotten louder with time and is now a very audible click eminating from the drive every 20-30 seconds. Vista doesn't give you access to those power management settings on hard drives so I ended up using a Linux utility ported over to Vista (hdparm) to shut off that power saving feature.

 

It's a bit of a crap shoot. I have seen two models of the exact same drive, one noisy the other was not.