T61p HD story and question

Soooo... I have a T61p which I sourced with the 7200rpm 160GB HDD. When I first started using I thought, "dang this thing is loud, why is the fan on all the time?". After spending a couple of hours trying to control the fan speed, I noticed (duh) the sound wasn't even coming from the fan location... the fan was always off.

Ok. So it's the hard drive. Obviously. And because I bought a 7200rpm drive, it's just naturally loud.

So last week I bought a 5400rpm 320GB Seagate. When I was transferring my OS to it, both drives were sitting out on my desk and sure enough the new 5400rpm drive was _much_ quieter.

That is, until I put it back into the machine. After which it was just as loud as the original drive!

My guess is that the design of the bay itself is amplifying the sound somehow. Has anyone had this problem / dealt with it by stuffing (and probably overheating) the bay?

There are empty spaces on top of and below the drive which can be insulated somehow, but with what? Or perhaps a different brand of drive (although the seagate was supposed to be quiet (and was outside of the bay)?

V.

 

Do you have the side rubber bumpers on the drive?

 

Yup, the side rubbre bumpers are there, and the drive fits snugly into the bay, no rattling.

V.

 

That's what I thought too.

 

I've got the same model and while I started with a 7200RPM that never bothered me, the 500GB 5400RPM model I installed does seem to be much louder then I hoped. When it was just sitting on the table with the adapter (no case) it seemed queiter.

Getting a bit annoying when it just sits there moving a tiny bit of cache or something.