possibly dumb question re: t400 & roll cage

hey guys i bought the t400 a few months ago when it first came out ... part of my reasoning was due to the magnesium roll cage, which is supposed to totally protect the guts of the laptop.
since my purchase, i installed a new hard drive (hitachi 7k320) and it's louder/more vibratey than the HD that came with the laptop. no big deal, i'm only including this because it might be helpful for my real question, which is..

i noticed that when i put my weight on the laptop's palm rest, i can hear the hard drive make constant spin-up, spin-down noises. these noises go away when i don't put my weight on the right side (where the hd is)..

obviously my weight is putting pressure on the right side of the laptop, where the hd is, and it's squeezing it and that can't be good. i guess i thought this would be okay due to the roll cage..isnt it supposed to be really stiff etc?

i dunno. can i get someone's input on this? thanks in advance!

 

Why would you put your weight on the palm rest?

 

there is the fingerprint reader there. open up the hdd cover (held by the single large screw) and take a peek inside. see if it touches the hdd, or if there is a tiny gap there. if so, you are pressing down too hard and I'd advise against it.

 

Yikes!

I just bought that hard drive to put in a T400 which I've been hesitating to order. How much louder is it than the factory hard drive? What factory hard drive did you get?

The loudness of the HDD might be an issue for me because I'd be using the T400 occasionally for audio recording.

 

What will you do if the fan speeds up then (which if doing recording is not beyond the realms of possibility). With any computer-based studio you need to make sure you have your control room/area separate (acoustically) from your performance area (which is why proper studios have a separate control room and recording booth/room as I can tell you from experience with the air con on to cool all the equipment a control room can have a fair amount of low-level background noise).

 

The idea of having a laptop for recording is that it is mobile—I won't be able to keep it acoustically separate from the recording environment in every case. I certainly won't be using it for professional recording, but I want the laptop's noise footprint to be as minuscule as possible. That is one reason I've chosen a T400 (quiet fan).

Regarding the Hitachi 7K320, I've read on it a bit more and have decided I'll give it a try. It's already too late to return the one I bought, and I've seen conflicting reports on its noise and vibration. It is a 7200 RPM drive, so of course it'll be a bit louder. Hard drive noise seems to be a subjective thing, though—some people are more picky about it than others. I'm about to find out if I'm one of them.

 

hi..the hard drive isn't loud, actually. it's pretty quiet... the thing is though, that it is vibratey.. when you are typing and your palm is on the palmrest, you'll be able to feel it. kinda sucks ... anyways, after you get used to it you don't notice but i don't think it's really something that anyone should have to put up with if they're using quality parts in a quality laptop. sigh.

anyways..as to why i would be putting my weight on it, sometimes i have the laptop on a table, and i'm standing up typing a quick email. what happens is that i'm typing and putting my weight on the laptop while doing so. know what i mean? anyways... it makes the hard drive act funny for sure, and i won't do it anymore but it really makes the thinkpad lose some of its appeal for me. i don't want to have to baby a laptop, i want to have something sturdy that i can just throw into a bag and walk out the door, and not worry about whether or not it's going to get smashed with a bunch of books or whatever.

 

Those are, to a certain extent, unrealistic expectations of any notebook today short of something that's hardened for rough use. And you probably don't want to pay that price nor carry that weight.

 

There is a difference between the palm rest's plastic strength and then having your laptop closed in toss into a backpack. If you think the plastic palm rest is not up to standards, talk to lenovo about it. The roll cage might not be directly bracing under the palm rests which is why you have some concern with the hard drive.

 

After having the 7K320 in use for a few weeks in my T400, I can say it does produce some vibration and whirring noise (audible only because of the T400's super-quiet case fan). However, it's not enough to bother me. It's not the quietest HDD around, but it isn't extremely noisy, either. For the price I paid for it, I can't complain. It will be my primary HDD for the foreseeable future.